V. JAMES J\J ILES, ■IvEA' IIOREB CHUrxCH, ABBEVILLE DISTEICT, S. C. .:\inv, m\\ m diuj ': REV. ja:MKS C. Fl;R>[AN PUBLiyilp:D AT THE };i T OREENVIUE, S. 0. i. E. ELFOKD'S PRES 15o3 SEHMON ON THE DEATH OP EEV. JAMES M. CHILES, PREACHED AT HOREB CHURCH, ABBEVILLE DISTRICT, S. C. OIT SUNDAY, 29th OP MARCH, 1863. BY REV. JAMES C. FURMAN, D. D, PUBLISHED AT THE EEQUEST OF THE CHURCH. GREENVILLE, S. C. G. E. ELFORD'S PRESS 1863 SERMON: l^AHUM, 1 : 7 — The. Lord is good, a stronghold in the time of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him. The text forms a part of a remarkal)le prophecy of the destruction •of one of the most famous cities of antiquity. Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, was the largest of the then existing cities of the world. Covering a space fifteen miles in length and nine in width, and gathering into itself the wealth of surrounding regions, it. was, as large cities are apt to be, the abode of impiety and sin. On a previous occasion, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred years before, another prophecy, with which the readers of the New Testa- ment are familiar, from our Saviour's allusion to it, was uttered by the prophet Jonah. " Thirty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed," were the terrible words by which the man of God aroused the fears of the guilty Ninevites. The destruction thus announced was averted by the general and profound humiliation of the" inhabitants. But sins, though once repented of, if repeated and persisted in, produce their natural results. The blow once suspended is about to fall on the head of a people whose iniquities are full. Nahum is employed to predict the coming destruction. His prophecy is regarded by the critics as a finished poem. The exordium, within which our text is formed, contains a majestic and sublime descrip- tion of the attributes and acts of Jehovah. Some of the touches in this grand picture demand a passing notice. Thus, in the very open- ing, he says, " God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth," &c. Here two words are used which have come to be most generally under- stood in a bad sense, as when we say of another, " he is a jealous man," or " he will take revenge for injury done him." But the meanings attached to these terms are not the necessary, nor, indeed, the original meanings. As the word " passion," in the colloquial expression, " he was in a passion," has come to signify the violent exercise of irascible feelings, yet, in its primary signification, only •denotes strong emotion, as when we speak of the passion of love or SERMON. hatred, of pity or regentment, so here the words employed are to be understood without the qualification which usually attaches to them. In fact, we still use the word jealous in such- connections as exclude all suspicion of an improper quality, as when we describe a man as jealous of his honor. We mean to say only, but to say strongly, that he preserves his honor with the scrupulous regard which only a man of high integrity can feel. It is in this sense that God employs the term as descriptive of Himself, in the sanction by which He enforces the Second Commandment, " For I, the Lord, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting," &c. : it is intended to teach the impossi- bility of offenders escaping with ioapunity, because of God's just and necessary regard to his own glory. In like manner, revenge, •in the depraved and selfish condition of our fallen nature, almost certainly degenerates into a fell and malignant passion. Its indulg- ence, therefore, is denied to us, in our individual cases and relations, but is yet allowed to civil society. Thus the apostle Paul declares the civil magistrate to be "the minister of God, an avenger to exe- cute wrath upon him that doeth ev41." — Rom.xii: 4. Now, this Divine warrant for the exercfse of revenge in a particular instance, proves that it is not wrong in itself, essentially. Nay, more, the inspired Word teaches, by implication, that without it the exercise of God's justice towards oflfenders at the last day would be impossible. " Is God unrighteous that taketh veiigeance ? How, then, shall God judge the world?" It is, then, righteous vengeance — necessary because right, and so terrible because thus necessary — which is to take hold upon the enemies of a holy God. Along with these terms, thus explained, and guarded against misconception, the preface of this prediction stands crowded with images sublimely descriptive of God's power and agency. Actual natural phenomena, forms of actual miraculous interposition, and then other forms of the exercise of omnipotence, are instanced. Of such natural phenomena, tempest and drought are specified. Are the elements torn and convulsed by the rush of mighty winds ? It is God who has his way in the whirlwind, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He seals up the clouds, and " a fruitful land is turned into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein." The case which the prophet gives, affords us the most vivid picture. It is Carme], Lebanon, Bashan, visited with drought, SERMON. 5 and fainting under the touch of the Divine rebuke. Of the* Ikst of these, (Bashan,) an English traveller (Buckingham) says : "We continued our way over this elevated tract, continuing icr behold with surprise and admiration a beautiful country on all sides of us : its plains covered with a fertile soil, its hills clothed with forests, and at every turn presenting the most magnificent land- scapes that could be imagined." " Lofty mountains gave an outline of the most magnificent character; flowing beds of secondary hills softened the romantic wildness of the picture ; gentle slopes, clothed with wood, gave a rich variety of tints, hardly to be imitated by the pencil ; deep valleys, filled with murmuring streams and verdant meadows, offered all the luxuriance of cultivation, and herds and flocks gave life and animation to scenes as grand, as beautiful, and as highly picturesque, as the genius or the taste of a Claude could either invent or desire." In consonance with this are the Scriptural allusions to the "strong bulls of Bashan," an efiect, and therefore a sign, of fertility and abun- dance. But when God sees fit, the rich, productive soil denies their maintenance toman and beast. — The drying up of rivers and of seas seems not improbably to look to those stupendous occasions when Israel and their enemies together, but from diflerent points, became, the one the preserved and wondering, the other the astounded and perishing spectators of wonders achieved by the arm of the Almighty made bare. — In theconjoined imagery, the rapt mind of the Prophet dwells upon other imaginable displays of the same omnipotent energy at work to destroy — mountains quaking, hills melted, the earth and its inhabitants burning b^ore the presence of God, his anger being poured forth like fire. In this grand and awful exhibition of Divine attributes are inter- mingled some of those gracious assurances — those revelations of other attributes of Jehovah — which make Him the object of love and hope, as well as of fear. Like the fringe of silver upon the skirt of a portentous cloud, where the edging or light only makes the roll- ing blackness beneath more black, they are intended, by the antithe- sis, to make the dismal ruin which these threatenings denounce still more palpable. Thus, God's slowness to anger will make that anger only the more fearful when it comes. It will be the bursting of a flood sweeping with more destructive violence, because it has been pent up from an earlier overflow, and raised to a higher head, " EEaMON. So the Apostle Paul represents the despisers of God's goodness and long-suflfering and forbearance, as heaping up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. In like manner, the language of the text, while it asserts the Divine benevolence in the safety given to those who trust in Him, admonishes us by the contrast, how hopeless, how remediless, must be the ruin of those who not only have no security in God, but^ must even meet Him as an enemy, in unequal contest with the Omnipotent, hke the crackling thorns resisting the fire, or the dust of the summer threshing-floor the whirlwind. But it is not our purpose to-day to consider the views thus placed in contrast with the text, but the text itself as thus related to the other representation of which it forms a part. Thus viewed, it con- tains a great truth, always precious, and specially applicable to our present circumstances. It represents to our view the good man ; and thus considered, it does three things : It gives us, 1st, an obvi- ous fact in his outer condition ; 2d, a distinctive description of his character ; and 3d, an inestimable privilege of his inner life. In other words, we have three great facts respecting the pious man, relating, the first, to the circumstances pf his being — another to his character — and the third to his spiritual immunity. As to his outer condition, he is subject to trouble ; as to his character, he puts his trust in Ood; as to his high privilege, his security is in God himself. And first : The good man is subject to trouble. To say this of him is involved in saying that he is a man. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. In other words, this fact in his experi- ence occurs as certainly as the sequences of a law of nature. It results from causes in himself and from causes external to himself. Look at him intellectually : his wisdom and his folly ahke .occasion trouble. "Ho that increases knowledge increases sorrow ;". and if in some sense, and to some extent, "ignorance is bliss," in another sense, and to a greater extent, it is the prolific source of dangerous error, of mischievous blundering, of painful privation, and often of remediless damage. — Look at his capacities of enjoyment : each of them, in turn, is as liable to become the inlet of suffering as it is the inlet of enjoyment. His desires make him vulnerable by disappoint- ment. His hopes are balanced by his fears. His love for others not only endows him with the wealth of exquisite satisfactions, but SERMOIS'. 7 makes him " poor indeed," when the just expectations of friendshij> or of conjugal or parental affection are cruelly mortified by the mani- fested unworthiness of their objects, or are rudely annihilated by the sundering blow of death. — Look at him physically : What sense may not become the avenue of pain and even of agony ? The won- drous eye, catching a thousand perfect pictures in an hour upon its retina, for the advantage and amusement of its owner, becomes too sensitive for light, and must withdraw from the bright world into artificial darkness ; nay, it becomes shrouded in a perpetual night ; and the strong man, who was wont to go where he pleased, now threads his gloomy way, led by a child or a dog. Again, the nerve which, erewhile, in its normal state, quietly and pleasantly subserved its purpose, in the functions of sensation and perception and motion, now starts into a fierce activity, as though it had acquired a serpent's fang and venom, or falling into feebleness, leaves its victim, like Tan- talus, before the stream which he could not reach, without hearing in an atmosphere of music or in the full current of conversation, of which he cannot partake ; or, again, sinking into an excitable inaction, it leaves the stalwart limb to drop like lead — cutoff from the con- trol of the will — dead before its time. If we look at man in his connection with others, the picture is still the same. Look at him in connection with inferiors and dependants. How much of trouble is often commingled with the feeling of respon- sibility. To provide for substantial wants, is to many the carking care which eats out the enjoyment of the home of poverty. To give the needed counsel, to present the right example, to bring to bear the true persuasions, and at the right time, by which the young — for instance, even one's own children — may be moved to enter, and enter- ing, to pui-sue the path of wisdom and virtue, oh, how great a care and trouble is this. And then to know that, in any case, you have not done all that you might have done, and to witness the deleteri- ous consequences of neglect, constantly going on and mingling with the history of a character and life, which, but for your failure in duty, might have been so different and so much better — this, surely, is an item worthy of the name on that list of troubles which make up individual human history. Then, too, our connexion with others involves our contact with the bad. Our property, our reputation, our liberty, our lives, are not out of the reach of avaricious, deceitful, 8 SERMON. bloody men. The fraudulent and false individual may make us the victim of his wiles. Unjust popular opinion may rob us of, our good name. Hostile armies may desolate our homes; may precipitate families from opulence to poverty ; may cause female delicacy which the very winds of heaven never touched rudely, to fly into the strangeness of a strange land to escape the contact of a brutal sol- diery, without respect for the sanctity of temples,, the infirmity of age, or the purity of woman. Before them the land may have been an Eden ; but behind them is a desolate wilderness. The king of Israel, left to the dreadful selection between three evils — war, pes- tilence and famine — does not hesitate to pray that he and his peo- ple may not fall into the hands of men. But even external nature, ministering so abundantly to our good, may yet occasion our trouble. The horse which accelerates and facil- itates his rider's locomotion, may yet break his limb or destroy his life. The fire which cooks our food and cheers the hearthstone, also burns our abodes. The rains which fructify our fields, raise the booming currents which sweep away their richest products. .The air which feeds the fire of life, enters our vitals charged with the deadly miasm. Such is man as man, of few days, but full of trouble, and there- fore such is the pious man. His piety constitutes no exemption from the universal liability. Nay, there are reasons which explain why the voice of inspiration declares, " many are the afliictions of the righteous;" as if it had said, the 'good man is emphatically the man of trouble ; for, first, the range of the objects from which his troubles arise is enlarged. It takes in not only the moral, but the spiritual. It embraces not only the life that now is, but the life which is to come. Sitij to him, is not a fiction, but a reality — a sore, grievous reality, outweighing all others ; and whether seen in himself or in others, he mourns over it with a sorrow which is typified only by the bitter distress of him that mourns over a first-born. Again, the sen- , sibility of the good man's nature is more refined and exquisite. For this reason, Jesus, the immaculate man, suflered from mere contact •with men, with an intensity beyond our comprehension ; ^nd good men, as they are assimilated to the image of his purity, sufier from like causes in proportionate degree. In addition to this, the opposi- tion from without is enhanced. He who lets men alone in their sins SERMON. '9 and vices, is sure to escape that opposition and its attendant trouble which he excites who cannot let them alone. He undertakes to do good to the disobedient and rebellious ; and even if he does not incur their malediction, yet in many cases he is compelled to witness the failure of his efiforts — efforts which leave those in whose behalf they were put forth, more unimpressible than before — and he takes up the lamentation of the prophet, " I have labored in vain ; I have spent my strength for nought and in vain." — And a fourth reason for this feature in the experience of good men is, that trouble is a part of the designed discipline which schools them for higher virtue, and fits them for Heaven-. But it is time to pass to our text's distinctive description of a good man's character — "The Lord knoweth them that trust in HimP There is one characteristic sentiment common to the good every- where. Angels in Heaven, saints in glory, and saints on earth, trust in God. There is a spurious religious trust, which is not trust in God. The trust of the deist, who reposes in the assurance that God is too good to punish sin, is trust in a fictitious being, and therefore no trust in God, The trust of the Pharisee, while he thanked God that he was not as other m§n, was a trust in himself. So now men may trust that they are sharers in the Divine favor, who yet do not trust in God ; because there is nothing in what God has said or done which warrants the conclusion that they do share His favor. But, on the other hand, there is an actual trust in God. It is an important question, "What is it?" The idea itself is a simple idea, incapable of definition, not to be understood without experience of the thing signified by it, and capa- pable only of being illustrated by analogous cases. It is the senti- ment which lies back of our belief in cases where we believe only because of our corfidence in the integrity and veracity of our inform- ant. It is the sentiment which lies back of our repose, when we have confided our property and our very lives to the hands of another, and yet not the very tbionest shadow of a misgiving ever passes over our spirit. It is the 5=piiit of the child which has stood pale and shrinking at the entrance of a long dark passage, but putting its little hand into its father's hand, walks beside him with the assur- ance of perfect safety. It is the spirit of affiance, the in-forming essence of love, the secret of harmony, the very soul of union between 10 SERMON. spiritual beings. Trust, trust, beautiful word — blessed thing ! All the society of earth that is worth the name, is so because of its pres- ence. Heaven itself is held together in beauteous accord by its blessed potency. It was the loss of trust which carried our first mother to the forbidden tree. It was distrust of God which makes the blackness of darkness forever of the infernal pit. And it is dis- trust of God which perpetuates the ungodliness of earth, and gives to hurnan degradation and misery their deepest shadows. Trust in God is exercised toward Jehovah, considered in Himself. It rejoices that he is just what he is, and the soul which feels it would rather yield up its own existence than touch an attribute of the infi- nitely glorious and perfect "I Am." Exercised toward God, m vietv of what he has done, it receives his declarations with unquestioning confidence — as has been said, " takes God at His word." It rehes upon His promises as a sufficient ground for hopes to be realized by what shall occur only within the Divine mind, (and so of hopes of forgiveness and acceptance,) or in that unknown region which lies beyond the boundaries of earth and time, (and so of hopes of the resurrection and an everlasting abode with God in glory.) It is this trust in God which underlies the believer's faith in Christ. Guilty, self-condemned, self-despairing, seeing by the hght of reason, that there is nothing before him but certain, inevitable, overwhelming destruction, he lays hold, by this faith, on the hope set before him by the Gospel. As no truth is so important, so none appears to him so gloriously sure as that which supports the promises of Divine mercy. Believing that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor God's ways as our ways, he springs up to the unutterable assurance of a Divine pardon, and rejoices with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. "With this experience he is now prepared for a new interpretation of God's providences. Calamities may thicken around, but to the upright there ariseth a light in the darkness. " Content," he sings^ " Content where'er thy hand shall lead, The darkest path I'll tread, , Joyful \7ill leave these mortal shores, . And mingle with the dead." " When dreadful guilt is done away, No other fears we know ; That hand which scatters pardons down Shall crowns of life bestow." SERMOIT. 11 And this brings us to our third fact, the security of the pious man. The Lord is good. — a stronghold in time of trouble. The imagery is derived from military affairs. The stronghold was the means of defence against the assaults of enemies. It was sometimes arti- ficially constructed ; it was sometimes naturally provided, as in the height of mountain fastnesses, inaccessible to an invader. How pre- cious to the poor, persecuted Albigenses were those Alpine retreats, where the feet of their oppressors could not come. But here God himself is the fortress, the rock of absolute safety. " The name of the Lord is a strong tower ; the righteous runneth into it and is safe." " God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble : therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea ; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled ; though the moun- tains shake with the swelling thereof." Let God defend, and what harm could a universe arrayed against us do ? And this is the defence of every behever. Let human malignity bring the battery of all untoward circumstances — let infernal malignity spring its mines of deepest hate — yet the believer in Jesus stands secure. He is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in God ; no enemy can reach him but through God, his hiding-place. Blessed security 1 Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. In this connection let me say it is not only the power and veracity of God which produce this security ; it originates equally in the ten- derness of Divine love. God loves the trusting heart for its very trust. Did you never remark how conspicuous trust moves the heart of the trusted to its very depths. We instinctively shrink from the thought of wounding, by disappointment, a trusting heart. The nature which thus feels, God has given us, and it is but a reflec- tion of his own benignant heart. And can God fail the confiding spirit that goes to him, that leans upon hinf, that says in the beauti- ful simplicity of its repose on the Divine faithfulness, "All my expectation is from Him ?" " My God ; in him will I trust ?" No ! No ! No ! Listen, listen to the words of the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life ; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and none is able to pluck 12 SERMON. them out of my Father's hand." Heaven and earth may pass away, but not one jot or one tittle of these words shall fail. We have thus looked at the good man in his outward circum- stances — in his high character — in his certain destiny. Of such a man it is our pleasing, yet mournful oflSce, to gather up some brief memorials. To your former loved and revered Pastor, the doctrine of our text you could all attest as distinctly and empha- tically applicable. I might, then, close this discourse, leaving it to your knowledge and feelings to apply to the individual case what I have spoken in the general;, more especially when I see not only the large concourse of members of the denomination t(8»> which he belonged, but the presence of other pious men and of ministers of other communions, thus spontaneously and affectingly acknowledging, the great Christian excellence of our loved and lamented brother. But it is perhaps proper that I should add some expression, however imperfect, of my own estimate of his character and worth. Looked at as a whole, his character presented an assemblage of traits evenly balanced and smoothly blended. With a single slight exceptiop, no quality appeared in excess. The beholder was impressed with the symmetry of a well-proportioned figure, free from all excrescence or distortion, or unsightly development of a single part. He was calm and self-possessed, but not cold or phleg- matic. He was bold without presumption^ decided, but not obsti- nate. He was humble, with no tinge of servility or sycophancy ; tender and sympathizing, but not efleminate. He was guileless, and not only eschewed but abhorred all artifice and pretence ; and here occurred the slight deficiency to which I have alluded — a "failing that leaned to virtue's side " — th.e confiding generosity of his nature^ made him too slow to detect guile in others. He was exactly and scrupulously truthful, but he did not make candor a cover for bitter- ness ; and he spoke painful truths only when it was necessary. He did not act upon impulse, and yet in all he did was seen the man of feeling. His movements were not those of a skiflf, one-while with full-blown sail skudding before the wind, and, may-be, passing its proper point, and then flapping its unfilled sail and drifting with the current. They were rather those of the steadfast steamer, moving by a power from within, and independent alike of the winds and tides. SERMON. 13 Such was his character, considered as a whole. Let us briefly contemplate" it in some of its parts. And First. He was gifted with that inestimable attribute, strortg com- mon sense. No one could form his acquaintance without perceiving that he had come in contact with a man of sound, solid judgment. In the general conduct of life, .this power qualifies its possessor to make a selection of proper ends, and to adapt suitable means to the accomplishment of those ends. When once the sphere of his action is selected, it keeps hira moving regularly in his own orbit. In any department of life its influence is most important in the power -which it involves of forming accurate judgments in regard to men — but nowhere more important than in the work of the ministry, where the objects on which the workman operates are human beings, with all their infinite diversities of tastes, capacities and susceptibilities. In the absence of this quality, the occupant of the ministry may make himself the favorite of a particular class ; while between him and other classes there is very little contact, and still less sympathy. But the minister who is endowed as our lamented brother was, prac- tically adapts himself to each, and so to all. The work of adapting himself to individuals, with all their varied and often opposite cha- racters, is done as if by instinct, readily and successfully. The instructions of such a minister meet the wants of the thinking and the cultivated, and yet do not omit to provide for the ruder and more undeveloped class of minds ; and in his intercourse he is alike aa object of attraction and interest to the energetic and active, driving with the vigor of their full strength at the great objects of busy life ; to the aged, resting in the quietude of life's evening; and to the young, with all their curiosity, their inexperience, and their fresh and budding feelings. Second. Intimately connected with this was m?ivkQdi self -respect , The absence of this quality in those who. fill the office of the sacred ministry, is seen more frequently in the form of an unseemly levity. We are far from maintaining that there is anything in the habits of minds engendered by a proper pursuit of the minister's work, which destroys a minister's relish for real wit, or rendei*s him insensi- ble to genuine humor. Nay, we even believe that the power of pathetic representation is in a great degree the very power which perceives the analogies which, in the case of wit, surprise and amuse 14 SERMON. US ; but with these admissions, it is yet true that there is a dignity and gravity appropriate to the office which would even be oftended at wit itself, out of place, or inordinately indulged. So little sym- pathy had our beloved brother for the temper of those who "court a grin where they should woo a soul," that I remember to have heard him (when himself but a beginner) mention, with strong disapproba- tion, some instance of levity in an announcement from the pulpit, which had passed under his own eye. To a mind like his, the office he filled was invested with too much solemn responsibility, and was connected with associations too sacred, and contemplated issues too important ajid tremendous, to allow his exercising it in any other spirit than that of profound gravity and self-control. Entering it in the very greenness of his youth, he magnified his office, and showed that he had felt the weight of the Apostle's admonition to a young minister of early times : " Let no man despise thy youth." Through the course of more than thirty years such was the manner in which he always appeared. Far removed from every thing little, as from everything low, he moved among you a man of God — without van- ity, but full of self-respect, undesignedly challenging and winning the respect of all. There is a gravity in some characters which is the result of other qualities, drawn with a sort of mathematical rigidity. The impas- sive features of such persons never catch a smile but as the rock does the sunshine, reflecting but never feeling it, the same impervi- ous, unsoftened material before and afterwards. Such was not the gravity of our brother ; for, Third. His heart was the abode of deep and tender sympathies. His self-respect, as we have defined it, being anything else than a form of selfishness, sprung from a source which yielded equally a true respect for others. He could not have been placed in circum- stances in which he would have felt that any being having the human nature and thrown in his way was yet devoid of all claim upon him. His bosom glowed with a genuine philanthropy. It was under the influence of such feelings, quickened by the power of the Holy Spirit, that he yielded himself to the work of the ministry. He could not but have seen that this was a surrender of reasonable prospects of worldly gain. - In any other employment, possessed of the advantages of patrimony, social position, vigorons health, educa- SERMON. 15 tion and mental energy, the way was open before him to the acqui- sition of wealth and its attendant advantages. But upon such pros- pect, he turned his back, to take his place with an ill-requited class ; because with them he could best indulge the holy passion of love to the souls of men. His affections exhibited themselves in uncommon beauty, as devel- oped in the domestic and the more private social relations. As a son. His filial dutifulness was conspicuous. I well remem- ber, in my own case, the desire to see his excellent and venerated father, produced by the affectionate and reverential manner in which the son was accustomed to refer to him. As a brother. He had a heart to feel to the full the force of the motive by which Jacob sought to bind his sons in brotherly accord. Utterly foreign to his nature was the imperious spirit which some- times in an elder brother makes the fraternal bond chafe the feelings of younger members of the circle. His generous, sympathizing nature gave it at once the strength, the beauty and the softness of a silken cord. As a parent. He reigned in bis family by the sweet, silent influ- ence of reciprocated affections. He taught his children to respect themselves by the respect he paid them. It was delightful to wit- ness the beautiful affectionateness of his manner, and the blended confidence and respect which was its natural return. The last action of his life was the mission of parental solicitude, which carried him to the distant bedside of a wounded son — to be borne back, alas ! by that very son, to his own last resting place. As a hushand. It would be difficult to over-state the realitj respecting his conjugal affection. The most considerate and delicate attentions marked his married life. He never forgot for a moment the happiness .which ha d been committed to his keeping. Nay, to promote it, he sacrificed cheerfully other occasions and means of enjoyment which he dearly valued. As a friend. I am entitled to speak of him from an experience of more than thirty years. In all that time I never saw anything but the most perfect frankness and the most genuine cordiality. Thrown together when we were each on the threshold of manhood, be honored me with his. confidence ; and, though several long inter- vals oi absence occurred, I never met him without perceiving that 16 SERMON. the attachment of youth was as green and vigorous as ever. Not one hour of shyness or indifference ever marred our intercourse ; and ia that intercourse he was as pure and devoted as he was frank and cordial. I never heard a sentiment from his lips which would have seemed unfit upon a dying bed. This brings us naturally to remark upon, Fourth. His deep religious spirit. This was apparent (1.) In his conscientiousness. What he believed to be right he did, irrespective of consequences. Desiring the esteem of good men, he never swerved a hair's breadth from the line of acknowledged duty, in order to secure the' good opinion of any one. He was no popularity-hunter. No man, indeed, in the districts where he had lived and labored, was held in higher repute ; but reputation came, to him without his seek- ing — it was the attendant shadow of living worth. If others deserved blame, painful though it was to his sensitive nature, he yet administered the needed rebuke. I remember to have heard him administer such a rebuke to a popular candidate, who was present at an Associational meeting, and in the excess of his political zeal was turning a great rehgious opportunity into an occasion for promoting mere secular ends. Our brother felt it to be wrong, and at the risk of offending 'he faithfully remonstrated against the evil. He des- canted less freely and frequently than some others upon topics on which he differed from other Christians; but this did not proceed from a want of moral courage, or from an imperfect action of his conscience. He did not abstain from -any indifference to the truth, or from a pusillanimous desire to avoid the consequences of asserting it. He abstained, because he rightly estimated the strength of pre- judice, even in good men, and appreciated the obstacle which it opposes to the entrance of truth. (2.) His deeply religious spirit was apparent in his habitual devoutness. He read his Bible not as an intellectual pastime, but to feed the spirit of devotion, and he gave himself to prayer. It was impossible to hear his earnest pleadings, his earnest, child-like breath- ings into the ear of God, without feeling assured that, like Enoch, he " walked with God." (3.) His piety gave an unction to his preaching. It sustained his earnestness and gave power to his persuasions. In the work of the ministry he delighted as in a native element. In the judgment of SERMOir. 17 others he may have been too inattentive to his tenaporal interests, but it was because the love of Christ constrained him. " Never," says one who knew him most intimately, " did he seem so happy as when endeavoring to lead sinners to Jesus ;" and the testimony of judicious observers is that the churches under his care showed the effect of his pious labors in the increased and sustained tone of their spirituality. Men not given to hasty utterances have said that they never knew a minister more deeply and constantly devoted to his pious work ; and now, after several years of absence from the State, there is many a house in which the news of his death has awakened an exquisite sense of bereavement, and the thought that he is no more to be welcomed at the threshold, brings with it a painful gloom. • I *have thus presented an outline sketch of an amiable and admi- rable ministerial character, a full • portraiture of which would require more individual facts than I command. I have spoken of him under great disadvantages, growing out of the fact that the separateness of our respective fields of labor cut me off for many years from personal observation of the minute details of his life ; and the health of his family during a large portion of these years prevented those reunions at our annual religious assemblings which afford to ministers the precious opportunity of burnishing into fresh brightness the recollections of early years, ai}d sharing with each other their experiences in the work of the Lord. The circum- stances, too, since I received the request to perform this service, have not allowed my availing myself, to any extent, of information to be derived from others. On the other hand, I have spoken with the advantage of address- ing those who were familiar with his life and character, and who, if the qualities of his character have been presented in the most gene- ral and therefore least impressive way, were yet able to vivify every vague statement, and to fill up with many and many an apt illustra- tion what the speaker had presented in general terms. We are in the very neighborhood where his little feet were taught to trace their fearly steps to the house of God ; where he first uttered in the ear of God's people the grateful invitation, " Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul f where he first put on Christ in that solemn rite, which, by a definite IS SERMON. external act, declares the subject's belief in the spiritual resun-ection of the soul and the future resurrection of the body, founded on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesu3 ; where he first warned sinners of the wrath to come, and lifted np his voice tenderly to per- suade them to fly to the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world ; where venerable men of God, Belcher and Todd, Johnson and Rice, took part in his solemn induction into the ranks of fully accredited ministers ; where, through long successive years, he has done the work, and borne the trials, and enjoyed' the rewards, of a faithful, zealous, blameless, useful minister of the Lord Jesus. How many crowding recollections rise in your memories at the recital of these simple words. One remembers that the words of our dear departed brother once entered his souj as a barbed arrow, there to remain deep-infixed until in the process of a genuine repentance the hand of Divine mercy " solicited the dart " and healed the •wounded spirit. Another recalls that when his soul was cast down •within hip, and God and man were joined in his terrible condemna- tion ; when all behind was shame and all before was fear, the assur- ing voice, now alas ! to be heard no more, uttered the words, of gra- cious promise — when, lo! the darkness broke, and Christian hope^ like a golden dawn, burst upon the soul. Here one remembers that •when hesitating and faltering about the first step in a public Chris- tian profession, that well-known, faithful voice chided the delay or removed the stumbling-block which seemed to close up the path of duty.' The memory of another recalls some erring step retraced under the influence of a kind rebuke ; it may be some delinquency corrected at his earnest exhortation, some sore temptation broken, or some burden of affliction lightened by his true and tender words. To how many of you are all the sweet associations of your wedded life connected with the loved presence of him who invoked God's blessings on the nuptial bands. Many of you he baptized — you and your children — and to many of you he was the kind, tender^ sympathizing friend, who stood with you at the bedside of your sick and dying, and helped the faith of your departed kindred, as they went down into the valley of the shadow of death. He is not here to-day to ^eak to you in those tones so familiar that you can easily imagine them reverberating along these walls. But he speaks to you in the varied reminiscences of a well-spent life, SERMOK. 19 of a faithful ministry. Nay, he speaks to you in the text which we have been considering this day ; for it was selected by himself for this occasion. The selectioD of such a text is an exhibition in death of the beautiful humility of his life. Other passages would have afforded the preacher a more natural starting point for a eulogy of the dead. But in the spirit' of his whole ministry, which aimed not at self-aggrandizement, but at the exaltation of his Lord and Master, anticipating, as he could not but do, that his death would be made the occasion of public religious services, his meek and humble spirit chose as the theme of discourse a passage of the word of God which would allow of an allusion to himself only so far as it might tend to magnify the grace of God. Thus considered, the text is instructive as well by its silence as by what it says. On the one hand it says, "Let God alone be exalted." On the other, it points us to the life and the death of our lamented brother, only as occasions which Divine Providence has employed as a new setting for the blessed truth, " The Lord is good," whose place it will be impossible to fill."