SERMON. 2 Cor. v: 4. Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. LIFE has no choicer hours than these, which bring us together by a single feeling, turn our thoughts in one direction, and constrain us to hold a common memory. Such hours when they come should be ever welcomed, and we meet them best when we yield ourselves without resistance. to their control. We will offer no resistance to-day; but let the one feeling bear us where it will. And well we may; for it can bring no thought that is not sacred, no memory that is not holy, no sorrow even that is not gentle and kind. - I will not say there is no sadness in the hour; for so I should misinterpret it indeed. But sadness is of many forms. While there is a sadness that is born of pain, and bears only fruits of grief- a pain as of affections wounded, or hopes mocked, or confidence destroyed there is a sadness, too, that is born of joy, and can bear no fruits but of sweetness and peace-a sadness that is great, only because joy has been great a sadness that grows out of the riches of the past, and cannot forget its alliance with all that is purest and loveliest in life. Such sadness does the soul no harm; but touches its tenderer chords, only, like certain music that we know so well, to bring out that plaintive harmony whose very beauty it is that moves us to tears. Side by side lie the deep sources of smiles and tears; we know not always from which the emotion springs, nor in which form it rightly clothes itself. The one or the other will do. The one, indeed, passes quickly into the other, as cloud and sunlight chase each other over the summer field. The highest joy has its touch of pathos in it; and so our deepest grief may have its hint of joy. If you bring both these emotions here to-day, my friends, if you look into each other's eyes with tears, yet press each other's hand as though to say-" it is well; the good life is fitly ended; its long years of faithful service and well-tried sympathy find at last their full reward in the loving memories of grateful hearts,"- if you bring with you these conflicting feelings and hardly know to which to yield, it surely is not strange. They are not two emotions, but one. Your gladness and your grief alike are fit tributes of the hour; bearing witness together, as neither could alone, to the value and completeness of the life which has just found its peaceful ending. Complete, indeed. The serenity of its closing hours seemed but a token of its fulness and its perfect fidelity. You seemed to read in it the soul's calm consciousness of powers actively exerted for a worthy end, and of a life's work finished. The laborer's toil was ended, and the hour for rest had come. Not that he who has just left us put this into words; not that he claimed for himself any unwonted fidelity, or would have suffered us to claim it for him; not that he was ever conscious, perhaps, of doing more than meet life's simple duty as it came; yet one could not help feeling that the calmness and peace of his last hours, and the peculiar satisfaction with which his thoughts turned constantly to the field in which he had so long labored, were of themselves the highest testimonies to the devotedness of his toil, and the timeliness of its ending. To say that this life which has just ended possessed a singular harmony and unity is simply to call attention to its most obvious feature. Its internal unity seems to have cor responded fully with the external. The fact that his whole active ministry was spent in a single place, that all his words were spoken from one pulpit, and his whole heart given to one people, only enables us to trace the more distinctly the singleness of spirit by which his life was animated. In more senses than one that ministry seems to connect the present with the past, and to carry us back, as we view it, into the midst of another age. Since he came to this place, the little village of four thousand souls, just climbing out of the valley up the lovely hill-sides which surround it, has become a busy and crowded city; the Colonial simplicity of our nation's youth has vanished before the wealth and luxury of its prosperous manhood; ancient systems of education have yielded step by step to modern methods; the liberal faith which he maintained has passed out of its infancy into its maturity; the Christian ministry itself, leaving the primitive basis on which he found it, has entered upon new and still undefined relations with society; while during that same long period he saw a whole generation of remarkable men appear at his side, gain national repute, and pass away. Through all these changes, he remained unchanged, except as growing experience brought maturer wisdom, and a wider field, opening larger opportunities for the exercise of his activity, surrounded him with more lives to be influenced and a greater range of grief and joy to test his ever-ready sympathy. That he was always equal to the new demand, that the many found him as kind and sympathizing as the few, that the growing city found him as intent upon its interests, and engrossed in its concerns, as the little village, that the past held him by its traditions and its formalities only until the new age offered its better ways, while the constant advances of a period of peculiar religious agitation found him ever grounded in the same simple faith and trust, is what all testimonies from the past and the present coincide in declaring. Many voices out of the past come to us to-day, from the few still in the flesh who wit nessed those earlier days, as well as from the written page which tells us how from time to time, at various periods of his ministry, his parishioners united to give tender utterance to their appreciation of his worth, and those voices tell always the same tale of a pastor fondly loved; of a friend whose sympathies outran always the world's claim upon them, and hastened of their own accord to speak the needed word, or do the thoughtful deed; a freind whose unselfishness never thought itself too severely taxed, and whose patient devotion to others' needs never confessed itself abused, or met the utmost liberties with aught but kindly return; of a preacher earnest and effective, interpreting with quick sympathy the varying emotions of sorrow, alive always to the suggestions of the hour, and eager to press each current incident or thought home upon his hearer's mind; of a citizen loyal and laborious, prompt to spend himself in the service of the community, and recognizing the community's claim alone to share in the strength due first of all to his calling and his flock. Other features still, no doubt, others who saw him from year to year might add; to me these seem enough to mark his place and designate the man. And, as I say, these traits seem never to have changed. The last testimony, coming to-day from the literary companions of his later years, might stand for the first, when his career was just beginning. Indeed, to such traits no change could well come. The simple fidelity to duty with which he began never failed him, for it was of the essence of his being. The fount of sympathy never ran dry, but fuller rather as it was deeply drawn upon, for it was fed unceasingly from a rich and tender heart. The patient temper, however tried, continued always unruffled, not because he did not understand men's wiles, or could not vigorously rebuke their self * See Resolutions of the Antiquarian Society; Appendix. ishness or their uncharity, but because his innate gentleness and tolerance overmastered, in the end, his resentment. His love and friendship preserved their sweetness under every new test, not because he was unaffected by misconstruction or estrangement, but because, being genuine, his affections could know no change, and must remain love and friendship to the end. His religious faith bore itself undismayed through increasing agitation and controversy and change, because, being faith, it knew no faltering, and awaited always the sure triumph of the truth. In a word, each element of his nature was simple and unassumed; was accepted quietly as part of himself; and never changed, therefore, except to grow in strength, or except as his character assumed year by year its maturer proportions. Such, at least, seems to me, as I read it, the testimony of the past. cern. The basis of such a life and such a nature, of course, is simple and unquestioning trust; and its fullest expression is found in its religious faith. His life was, in the best sense, a religious life, and his religion his first and chief conHe was fond of his calling, as he could not help being, for it belonged to him by right. He was first of all a minister; yet I doubt if in being a minister, he ever found himself laying aside the man. His religion scemed rather the natural flowering of his soul, and his calling simply the sphere in which his native powers found their most appropriate exercise. His religious habits seemed to me, as I had opportunity of observing them, singularly unstudied, as though he felt no need of putting any thing on or off, when standing in the presence of God. Perhaps this is the very trait that lent often to his services. of spiritual sympathy such peculiar weight, which made his few words at the bedside so welcome a substitute for longer prayers, and which imparted a peculiar gracefulness to so many of his written and spoken messages of consolation. Certainly I cannot forget, though it was many years ago, |