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SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE CONGREGATION OF THE 
 
 FRESB^'-TERI^ZS' CHURCH, 
 
 CORNER OF FIFTH ATENUE AND NINETEENTH STREET, 
 
 AT TUE 
 
 '' MEMORIAL SERVICES" 
 
 OCTOBER 9, 1S59. 
 APPOINTED IX EEFEREXCE TO THE DEATH OF TDEIR LATE PASTOR, 
 
 JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER, D.D. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES HODGE, D.D., 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN HALL, D.D. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE SESSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 A X S O X D . F . R A X D O L P H , 
 
 6 S 3 BROAD W A Y . 
 
 1859. 
 
\ 
 
SERMON 
 
 CHARLES HODGE, D.D 
 
SERMON. 
 
 " He preached Christ."— Acts 9 : 20. 
 
 iN'oTHiNG hi2:lier than this can be said of any 
 man. Angels stand uncovered round the hum- 
 blest tomb on which these words are inscribed. 
 And so do we. The feeling which has gathered 
 this audience ; which uow fills every breast, bows 
 every head, and moistens every eye, is reveren- 
 tial love for him who in this desk preached 
 Christ. Had he discoursed on anv other theme, 
 though with the tongue of angels, and although 
 he possessed all knowledge, so as to unfold all 
 mysteries, he had been admired and forgotten. 
 Associated as he is with your knowledge of 
 Christ, your experience of his grace, your hope 
 of salvation, you at least never can forget him. 
 
 1. In preaching Christ, he preached that Jesus 
 of Nazareth is the true Messiah. As Paul was 
 
6 HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 pressed in spirit, and testified that Jesus "svas 
 Christ, and as Apollos mightily convinced the 
 Jews, and that publicly, showing by the Scrip- 
 tures that Jesus was Christ ; so, from this desk, 
 you have been taught that all the promises and 
 predictions relating to the person and work of 
 the Messiah refer to Jesus of Xazareth. You 
 have been taught that he is the seed of the 
 woman who was to bruise the serpent's head ; 
 the seed of Abraham in whom all the nations of 
 the earth are to be blessed ; the Son of David 
 who was to sit as king on Zion ; whose dominion 
 is to stretch from the river to the ends of the 
 earth ; who was to be a h'ght to the Gentiles and 
 the glory of his people Israel ; who was to 
 bear the sins of many, and make intercession for 
 transgressors ; before whom the kings of the 
 earth were to shut their mouths, and to whom 
 every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess 
 that he is Lord. 
 
 2. He preached that this Jesus is the Son of 
 God. So Paul preached Christ in the synagogues, 
 that He is the Son of God. Here Christ has 
 been constantly held up as the second person of 
 the Godhead, the eternal AVord, who created all 
 things, visible and invisible, and who upholdeth 
 all things by the word of liis power. For 
 tliis incarnate God, your profoundest adoration 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. 7 
 
 lias been demanded, yonr supreme love, the 
 obedience of the conscience, and the devotion of 
 the life. He has been presented as the proper 
 object of the religions affections ; and you have 
 been called upon to receive him as God in yonr 
 inner life, and taught that spiritual and eternal 
 life consists in fellowship with the Son of God, 
 in knowing, worshipping, and serving him. You 
 have been warned that to deny the Son is to 
 deny God altogether ; that to profess to worship 
 God, and yet not to worship the Son, is a contra- 
 diction ; that if to any the glory of God in 
 Christ be hid, they are lost ; that there is no 
 clearer manifestation of God ; that if men do 
 not believe in light as luminous, they can not be- 
 lieve in light as a fluid diffused through space ; 
 if they do not believe in hre, they can not be- 
 lieve in heat as latent ; if they do not believe in 
 God as seen, they can not believe in God as un- 
 seen. Christ has therefore been here preached 
 as the true God and eternal life. 
 
 3. When beset with all manner of doubts ; 
 when all around you seemed dark, and no cer- 
 tainty as to truth was from any source to be ob- 
 tained, Christ has been presented to you as the 
 faithful and true witness. He has been exhibited 
 as the Word, tlie Revealer, the source of all cer- 
 tain knowledge. You have not been taught to 
 
8 UE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 regard truth as something to be attained by re- 
 search or received on the testimony of reason. 
 Keason here sits veiled at the feet of Jesus, and 
 hears from his lips the answer to her anxious 
 question : What is truth ? IJis answer carries 
 with it its own evidence. Luminous and illumi- 
 nating, it enlightens the* understanding, it har- 
 monizes with our consciousness, so that every 
 chord vibrates in unison with his celestial voice. 
 As the heavens are high above the earth, and 
 can not be disturbed by the power of man, so 
 faith founded on the teaching of Christ, is exalted 
 above all the assaults of skepticism. In this sense 
 you have been taught that Christ is of God 
 made unto us wisdom. 
 
 4. When burdened with a sense of guilt, and 
 disturbed by a fearful looking for judgment, a 
 judgment all the more fearful because felt to be 
 deserved, and apprehended as inevitable ; in this 
 pulpit Christ has been preached as your righteous- 
 ness. You have been taught to regard your own 
 works, all you can either do or suffer, as utterly 
 unavailing. You have been pointed to the Son 
 of (lod, clothed in our nature, made under the 
 law, fiiltilling all its demands, working out for 
 you in your name and in your behalf, a righteous- 
 nesswhich satisfies all the requirements of justice, 
 and whose merit is commensurate with the infinite 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. V 
 
 dignity of Him whose rigliteoiisness it is. Clothed 
 in this spotless robe, yoii feel secure even before the 
 bar of God. The man by whose instrumentality 
 you have been thus clothed with the righteousness 
 of God, and made partakers of that peace which 
 passes all understanding, must have appeared to 
 you as Paul appeared to the Galatians ; as an 
 angel from heaven, as one sent of God, to de- 
 liver you from everlasting perdition, and to place 
 your feet upon a rock against which neither your 
 own sins nor the gates of hell ever can prevail. 
 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
 so has Christ been here lifted up, and you have 
 looked on him, and live. 
 
 5. Your lamented pastor ever preached Christ 
 as your sanctification. When oppressed with 
 the consciousness of pollution and helplessness; 
 when convinced that you could not change 
 your own hearts, could not repent, could not 
 even feel your guilt or mourn over your cor- 
 ruptions ; when your heart as been as a stone, 
 and your constant lamentation was, that you 
 could not make yourself holy, or in any mea- 
 sure prepare yourself to receive the grace of 
 God, he endeavored to convince you that you 
 were acting like a deformed child, who should 
 try to make itself beautiful before it could trust 
 its mother's love. He unfolded to you the mys- 
 1^ 
 
10 HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 terj of sanctification, by showing yon that it 
 is the love of Christ produces lioliness, and not 
 lioliness in ns that prodnces the love of Christ; 
 that he loves ns, not becanse we are lovely, but 
 makes ns lovely by the assnrance of his love. 
 He led yon to see that yonr life is hid with 
 God in Christ, that it is not yon that live, but 
 Christ that liveth in yon ; and tlierefore that the 
 only possible way in wliich yon can ever be de- 
 livered from the dominion of sin, and transformed 
 into the image of God, is not by any eiforts of 
 yonr own, not by any educational process, not 
 b}" acts of self-denial or penance, not by the effi- 
 cacy of any external rites, but by believing that 
 Christ loves yon, notwithstanding your nnworthi- 
 ness, and by receiving from him thegift of thelloly 
 Ghost. In other words, Christ has here been pre- 
 sented as the only source of sanctification, as his 
 righteousness is the only ground of justification. 
 
 6. He who so long filled tliis ])ulj)it, preached 
 Christ as a Redeemer, not only in the sense already 
 mentioned, as freeing ns from tlie condemnation 
 and power of sin, but as the deliverer from all evil. 
 He has been here exhibited as clothed with al- 
 mighty power, imbued with infinite wisdom and 
 love, pledged to save his people from the allin-e- 
 ments of the W(.)rl(l, from tliu nuieliiiKitions of 
 Satan, and from the power of their enemies; as 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. 11 
 
 raising them above the cares and sorrows of this 
 life, sustaining them in times of trial and in the 
 hour of death, and delivering them at last even 
 from the power of the grave, and presenting 
 them faultless in soul and body, before the throne 
 of God, as the trophies of his redeeming grace. 
 
 You will bear me w^itness that he whose de- 
 parture we so much lament, did preach Christ as 
 the Messiah, as the eternal Son of God, as the 
 only source of truth, as our righteousness, sancti- 
 fication, and redemption. From Sabbath to Sab- 
 bath, publicly, and from house to house, he tes- 
 tified that this is the true grace of God ; and 
 thus preaching, he was made of God to you a 
 savor of life unto life. 
 
 But how was he so eminently fitted thus to 
 preach? His first and most important, and, in- 
 deed, indispensable qualification for this work, 
 was, that he himself knew Christ. He had not 
 only that knowledge which is attained by the 
 studj^ of the Scriptures, and learning what is 
 therein revealed concerning the person and work 
 of Christ, but that knowledge which is due to 
 the inward revelation by the Spirit. Paul says 
 that it pleased God to reveal his Son in him, that 
 he might preach him among the Gentiles. He 
 does not refer here to the outward manifestation 
 of Christ which arrested him on his way to Da- 
 
12 HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 raascus, but to an inward revelation therewith 
 connected. It was a spiritual illumination by 
 which he was enabled to see the glor}^ of God in 
 the foce of Jesus Christ. One glimpse of that 
 glory transformed the blaspheming persecutor into 
 the humble, adoring, devoted servant of the 
 Lord Jesus. It was such a revelation that made 
 your pastor what he was. Without this, all his 
 other gifts had been of no account. 
 
 It is, however, an instructive fact, that the 
 apostle who labored, suffered, and accomplished 
 more than all the others, was the one most richly 
 endowed with natural abilities and acquired 
 knowledge. When these gifts are relied upon, 
 and especially when they are made the ground 
 of self-glorification, they are like the fire of 
 thorns, brilliant and noisy, but which soon goes 
 out in darkness, leaving nothing but ashes to be 
 scattered b}' the wind. But when their possessor 
 feels as Paul felt, that he is nothing, and can do 
 nothing ; when he relies, not on his powers of per- 
 suasion, but solely upon the demonstration of the 
 Spirit, then God condescends to use them for his 
 own glory and for the edification of the Churcli. 
 
 The Rev. James W. Alexander was therefore 
 what he was as a preacher of Christ, not only be- 
 cause he was a devout worshipper of Christ, but 
 also because he was endowed with varied natural 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 13 
 
 gifts, improved by along process of culture and 
 
 discipline. 
 
 He was born March 13tb, 1804, in Louisa 
 County, Virginia, in the house of his maternal 
 grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Waddel, of blessed 
 memory, by whom he was consecrated to God 
 in baptism. His father was the late Archibald 
 Alexander, D.D., the representative man of the 
 Church for our age and country, to whom he was 
 largely indebted for his religious, literary, and 
 the^ological training. After enjoying the instruc- 
 tions of the most eminently classical teacher of 
 his day, for some years, in Philadelphia, he com- 
 pleted his academical career in the College of 
 New-Jersey, in the year 1820. He was ap- 
 pointed a tutor in that venerable institution 
 while he was pursuing his studies in the Theolo- 
 logical Seminary at Princeton. In 1825 he was 
 licensed to preach the Gospel. The following 
 year he became the pastor of the church at Char- 
 lotte Court House, Virginia— a church which his 
 venerated father had previously served, and to 
 which his own son has recently been called. He 
 was forced to relinquish that charge on account 
 of the failure of his health, and in 1829 he set- 
 tled in Trenton, K. J., as pastor of the First Pres- 
 byterian Church in that city. In 1833 he was 
 elected Professor of Belles Lettres in the Col- 
 
14: HE PREACH KD CHRIST. 
 
 lege at Princeton. lie discharged tlie duties of 
 that office with eminent success for eleven years. 
 In lS4:-\: lie became the pastor of the Duane 
 street Church, Kew-York, whence he was called 
 by the General Assembly of our Church to fill 
 the chair of Ecclesiastical History and Church 
 Government in the Theological Seminary at 
 Princeton. A few years' experience convinced 
 him that the sedentary duties of a professor were 
 not suited to his peculiar constitution, and there- 
 fore in 1851 he accepted the charge of this 
 church, in the service of which he remained 
 until God called him to a higher service in 
 heaven. 
 
 This recital is sufficient to show how varied and 
 abundant were his means of culture and expe- 
 rience. He never filled a post which he did not 
 adorn, and never left a charge that the peo])le 
 did not mourn over his departure as a sad be- 
 reavement. He has died in the rich maturity of 
 his years and usefulness, leaving behind him no 
 superior, and few if au}^ equals in the sphere in 
 which he acted. The labors and caies of the 
 pastoral oflice over such a church, and in such a 
 city as this, had so worn on his sensitive fi'ame, 
 that early in the last spring he was obliged to in- 
 termit his services, and seek the renewal of his 
 strength among the mountains of his native State. 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. 15 
 
 Every tiling promised speedy and complete re- 
 covery. You were looking forward with conti- 
 dence to his return to his home and pulpit, when 
 the sad intelligence reached yon, that God had 
 otherwise ordained. A few days' illness from an 
 acute disease disappointed all your hopes. Early 
 on the morning of the last Sabbath of July, just 
 as the first rays of the sun gilded the tops of the 
 surrounding mountains, the glories of heaven 
 broke on his enraptured gaze. 
 
 Dr. Alexander united in himself gifts and 
 graces rarely found in combination. God had 
 endowed him with a retentive memory and a 
 perspicacious intellect, with great powder of ap- 
 plication and acquirement, with singular delicacy 
 of taste, with a musical ear, and a resonant 
 voice. These gifts were all cultivated and turned 
 to the best account. Probably no minister in 
 our Church was a more accomplished scholar. 
 He was familiar with English literature in all 
 periods of its history. lie cultivated the Greek 
 and Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish 
 languages, not merely as a philologist, but for 
 the treasures of knowledo;e and of taste which 
 they contain. To this wide compass of his 
 studies is in good measure to be referred many 
 of his characteristics as a writer, the abundance 
 of his literary allusions, his curious felicity of ex- 
 
16 
 
 HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 pression, and tlie variety of his imagery. Many 
 of his productions are like strings of pearls; 
 each sentence complete in its own beauty, and 
 all connected by an invisible thread. His iiicility 
 of production was wonderful. He would often 
 accomplish in days what few men could accom- 
 plish in as many weeks. He used his pen as if 
 it were a living member of his body, and found 
 a positive pleasure in its exercise. He was a 
 frequent contributor to literary and religious 
 journals. The Princeton lieview is indebted to 
 him for many of its most valuable contributions, 
 not a few of which have been reprinted both in 
 this country and in England. Moi-e than thirty 
 volumes on the Catalogue of the American Sun- 
 day-School Union are from his pen. To these 
 are to be added his more elaborate works, long 
 familiar to the Christian public in Great Britain 
 and America. 
 
 It was, however, not only in the department 
 of literature that Dr. Alexander was thus distin- 
 guished. He was an erudite theologian. Few 
 men were more conversant with the writings of 
 the early fathers, or more familiar with Christian 
 doctrine in all its phases. He embraced the 
 faith of the Keformed Churches in its integrity 
 with a strength of conviction which nothing 
 but the accordance of that system with his rel^ 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. 17 
 
 gious experience could produce. A faith founded 
 on argument inaj be shaken by argument; but 
 a conviction of truth arising from reh'gious ex- 
 perience, that is, from a state of consciousness 
 produced by the Spirit of God, is not to be 
 moved. Theology and philosophy are so related, 
 that devotion to the former involves of necessity 
 the cultivation of the latter. Dr. Alexander 
 was therefore at home in the whole department 
 of philosophical speculation. His last publica- 
 tion was an able exposition of the views of the 
 metaphysicians of the middle ages on one of the 
 most important questions in mental science. 
 
 Thus richly and variously was your beloved 
 ])astor endowed. These gifts, however, were but 
 accomplishments. Underneath these adornments, 
 in themselves of priceless value, was the man 
 and the Christian. lie was an Israelite without 
 guile. Probably no man living was freer from 
 all envy and jealousy, from, malice, hypocrisy, 
 and evil-speaking. ]^o one ever heard of his 
 saying or doing an miseemly or unkind thing. 
 The associations connected with his name in the 
 minds of all who knew him, are of things true, 
 just, pure, lovely, and of good report. 'No one can 
 think of him without being the happier and the 
 better for the thou2rht. He was a delio^htful 
 companion. His varied knowledge, his humor, 
 
18 HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 his singular power of illustration rendered his 
 conversation, when in health and spirits, a per- 
 petual feast. Having been brought early in 
 life to a saving knowledge of the truth, his re- 
 ligious knowledge and experience were profound 
 and extensive. He was therefore a skillful casuist, 
 a wise counsellor, and abundantly able to com- 
 fort the afflicted with the consolation wherewith 
 he himself had been comforted of God. He 
 was eminently a devout man, reverential in all 
 his acts and utterances, full of faith and of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 The pulpit was his appropriate sphere. There 
 all his gifts and graces, all his acquirements and 
 experiences found full scope. Hence the re- 
 markable variety which characterized his preach- 
 ing ; which was sometimes doctrinal, sometimes 
 experimental, sometimes historical, sometimes 
 descriptive or graphic, bringing scriptural scenes 
 and incidents as things present before the mind ; 
 often exegetical, unfolding the meaning of the 
 word of God in its own divine form. Hence, 
 too, the vivacity of thought, the felicity of style, 
 and fertility of illustration which were displayed 
 in all his sermons. He could adapt himself to 
 any kind of audience. When a Professor in 
 the College, he acted as a voluntary pastor of an 
 African church in Princeton, and we have heard 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. 19 
 
 him say that he regarded the sermons which he 
 preached to that congregation the best he ever 
 delivered. As we remarked in the commence- 
 ment of this discourse, he preached Christ in a 
 manner which seemed to many altogether pecu- 
 liar. He endeavored to turn the minds of men 
 away from themselves, and to lead them to look 
 only unto Jesus. He strove to convince his 
 hearers that the work of salvation had been ac- 
 complished for them, and was not to be done by 
 them ; that their duty was simply to acquiesce in 
 the work of Christ, assured that the subjective 
 work of sanctification is due to the objective 
 work of Christ, as appropriated by faith and ap- 
 plied by the Holy Ghost. He thus endeavored 
 to cut off the delays, the anxieties, and misgiv- 
 ino;s which arise from watchino; the exercises of 
 our own minds, seeking in what we inwardly ex- 
 perience a warrant for accepting wliat is out- 
 wardly offered to the chief of sinners, without 
 money and without price. He w^as eminently 
 successful in his ministry, not only in the con- 
 version of sinners, but in comforting and edifying 
 believers. The great charm of his preaching, 
 that to which more than to any thing else its 
 efficiency is to be referred, was his power over 
 the religious affections. He not only instructed, 
 encouraged, and strengthened his hearers, but 
 
20 HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 he bad, to a remarkable degree, the gift of call- 
 iuo- tbeir devotional feelino^s into exercise. In 
 bis prayers tbere were tbose peculiar intonations 
 to wbicb the Spirit of God alone can attune the 
 human voice, and at the sound of which the 
 gates of heaven seem to unfold, and tlie worship- 
 pers above and the worshippers on earth mingle 
 together, prostrate in adoration. Your religious 
 services, under bis ministry, were truly seasons 
 of devotion, the highest form of enjoyment vouch- 
 safed to men on earth. The man who can give 
 us this enjoyment, who can thus raise our hearts 
 to God, and bring us into communion with our 
 Saviour, we reverence and love. This is a power 
 which no one envies, from which no one wishes 
 to detract, which surrounds its possessor with a 
 sacred halo, attracting all eyes and offending 
 none. 
 
 Dr. Alexander's preeminence, therefore, was 
 due not to any one gift alone ; not to bis natural 
 abilities, to his varied scholarship, to his extensive 
 theological knowledge and religious experience ; 
 not to bis divine unction, or to bis graces of 
 elocution. It was the combination of all these 
 which made him, not the Urst of orators to bear 
 on rare occasions, but the first of preachers to 
 sit under, month after month and jear after year. 
 
 Dr. Alexander was a man of sorrows. Fre- 
 
HE PREACHED CHRIST. 21 
 
 quent family bereavements, repeated attacks of 
 illness, some of them attended bj great bodily 
 agony, a shattered nervous constitution, caused 
 him a degree of suffering protracted through 
 many years, known fully only to God and to his 
 own heart. xVs he entered heaven, a voice might 
 be heard saying : " This is one who has come out 
 of great tribulation, and has washed his robes 
 and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 
 The death of such a man is an irreparable loss. 
 God indeed will raise up other instruments to 
 carry on his work, but no one can ever supply 
 his place to his immediate relatives, to his life- 
 long friends, and to his children in the faith. 
 They all must carry with them to the grave a 
 wound which knows no healing. Such sorrow, 
 however, is not like the sorrow of the world, 
 which worketh death. It is the tribute which we 
 willingly pay to those we love. It is not incon- 
 sistent with joy and gratitude in the remembrance 
 of all that he was to us and to the Church. He 
 was one of the blessed of the Lord. Blessed in 
 his parentage, in his early conversion, in his 
 abundant gifts, in his long-continued and emi- 
 nent usefulness, in the admiration, love, and con- 
 fidence of the people of God. He has finished 
 his course, he kept the faith, and henceforth 
 there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness 
 
22 HE PREACHED CHRIST. 
 
 which the Lord the righteous Judge will give him 
 at that day. 
 
 In view of such a life and such a destiny, 
 earthly distinctions sink into nothing. No man 
 is so hardened, that he would not a thousand 
 times prefer to be what your beloved pastor was 
 and is, than to possess all of wealth and power 
 the world has to give. 
 
 As this discourse began with the name of 
 Christ, so let it end. The worship of Christ is 
 our religion ; the service of Christ our loyal 
 duty ; and the enjoyment of Christ is our heaven. 
 The sum and substance of the preaching ever 
 heard within these walls, is, that Christ is the 
 only source of truth, of righteousness, of holiness, 
 and of eternal life, so that we are complete in 
 him. To Him, therefore, be honor and glory, 
 might, majesty, and dominion, world without 
 end. Amen. 
 
SERMON 
 
 JOHN HALL, D.I) 
 
SERMON. 
 
 " Moreover, I will endeavor that ye may be able, after my de- 
 cease, to haye these things always in remembrance." — 2 Peter 
 1 : 15. 
 
 The decease of a minister of the Gospel — of 
 one who, as well as the writer of this sentence, 
 may be called " a servant and an apostle of Je- 
 sus Christ" — is an event of the most solemn 
 interest. 
 
 It is such to the minister himself, whilst yet 
 contemplated by him in anticipation : for he 
 knows that, besides his own personal standing at 
 the final judgment, he is bound to watch for the 
 souls of others as one that must give account — 
 and this with joy or grief, according, not only as 
 he will have to testify respecting those to whom 
 he has ministered the Gospel, but as lie himself 
 has been faithful to his trust. It is at his decease 
 he is to discover whether he has both saved him- 
 2 
 
26 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 self and them that lieard him ; -whetlier he shall 
 receive from the Chief Shepherd a crown of 
 glory that fadeth not away, or having preached 
 to others be himself a castaway. 
 
 His own decease is also a solemn contempla- 
 tion to a minister, because he knows that his 
 work is to survive him. His preacliing, his ex- 
 ample, his whole influence, are not as transitory 
 as his own brief life. Neither the good nor the 
 evil of his course will be buried w^ith liim. His 
 faithfulness or his negligence will ])rimarily af- 
 fect those whom he immediately served, but the 
 consequences may descend through that genera- 
 tion to those wdio will inherit the opinions and 
 the spirit of their fathers. lie may leave behind 
 him such permanent records of his life and of his 
 sentiments, that successive ages will reap the 
 benefit or the injury, as effectually as if they had 
 heard his voice, or been familiar with his com- 
 pany. It was the ambition — the " endeavor" — 
 of Paul, so long as he was " in this tabernacle," 
 so to present the glorious doctrines and precepts 
 of the Gospel, what he in the text, for the fifth 
 time in the cha])ter, emphatically calls ''these 
 things," that believers, consistently with their 
 obligations and his own, might be able after his 
 decease to have them always in remembrance. 
 
 Thus the decease of a minister is an event of 
 
ALWAYS IN KEMEMBRANCE. 27 
 
 great moment also to the Church ; and this in pro- 
 portion as he reached them bj his preaching, his 
 intercourse, his writings, his reputation, his per- 
 sonal character. In all these respects none stand 
 so close to a minister as the people whom he has 
 most directly served as a pastor and a teacher. 
 They knew liim best. They loved him most. 
 They can most justly appreciate him. They saw 
 him ; they heard him ; tiiey read him. They 
 remember the tones of his voice, the expression 
 of his countenance. They have local, sacred as- 
 sociations with his person ; he is recalled to them 
 as he stood in the pulpit, as he poured forth his 
 soul in prayer, as he united with them in the 
 songs of worship, as he broke to them with 
 tremulous emotion, the bread of the Lord's table, 
 as he stretclied his hands over them in bene- 
 diction, as he committed their children to God's 
 covenant in baptism, as he came to them when 
 tliey were in trouble, consoled them in bereave- 
 ment, soothed them in sickness, brought them 
 both temporal and spiritual relief in necessity, 
 was to them, in all circumstances, not merely an 
 official or professional attendant, but a sympa- 
 thizing friend ; and above all, or rather in con- 
 nection with all else, they remember how in pri- 
 vate intercourse, as well as in his public minis- 
 trations, he sought with the tenderness of a 
 
28 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 brother and the faithfulness of a messenger of 
 Christ Jesus, to awaken, or admonish, or comfort, 
 or instruct, or encourage, or guide ; by any 
 means, and according to the demands of each 
 case, to bring the soul to the Saviour, to the word 
 of his grace, to the converting and sanctifying 
 Spirit, to the full joy and peace of believing. 
 
 Ah! my brethren, have I touched your hearts 
 as this outline has brouglit before you the image 
 of your own pastor ? — our own beloved Alexan- 
 der? And do I indeed stand here to-day to 
 speak of his '" decease" ? — to call to your " remem- 
 brance" the things he has said, instead of hear- 
 ing them again from his own lips, as you fondly 
 hoped to do this very day, when, in a manner he 
 so gratefully appreciated, you prevailed upon 
 liim to suspend his labors that he might recover 
 strength ! What a ditferent occasion this from 
 that which you anticipated I How little you 
 thought when you closed your sanctuary a few 
 weeks ago, tliat when you sliould enter it again, 
 that new tablet would meet your eyes ! But the 
 event was not as sui-prising to him as to you. I 
 believe that when he set out on his journey he 
 was disposed, without any morbid presentiment, 
 to say : " And now behold I know that ye all, 
 among whom I have gone preaching the king- 
 dom of God, shall see my face no more." 
 
ALWAYS IX REMEMBRANCE. 29 
 
 Bat in the midst of these personal sorrows, let 
 us not overlook either the comforts or the obli- 
 gations that remain. Let us listen again to the 
 instructions of the text, that the influence of a 
 faithful minister goes beyond his decease, and 
 that, on the part of his people, both the benefits 
 and responsibilities of their sundered relation 
 continue. If ever a servant and apostle of Jesus 
 Christ labored less for momentary effect and per- 
 sonal ends, and mere lifetime results, than to lay 
 such foundations as would cause the saving truth 
 to be had in remembrance after his departure, it 
 was he whose voice lias scarcely ceased to echo 
 in this house. The instructions he imparted were 
 so weighty as to be worth remem.brance, and so 
 well conveyed as to defy all but wilfal forgetful- 
 ness. His decease has not arrested his sermons, 
 his visits, his counsels, his character. Being 
 dead, he yet speaketh; every thing recalls him ; 
 and vour minds, mv brethren, will be treacher- 
 ous to the tenderest and weightiest impressions 
 that are ever directed to them, if they do not re- 
 member both him and his words. He did not 
 seek yoar applause ; he did not labor for fame ; 
 he did not graduate his love and care for you by 
 his 0W11 brief years ; he did not measure the ex- 
 tent of his responsibility by the ephemeral judg- 
 ment of his fellow-creatures: it was the perma- 
 
80 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 iient, eternal result as to himself and you, that 
 lie kept before him. And so, if he could speak 
 to us to-day, he would not ask us for our eulo- 
 ix'ies ; he would not be intent on learnincc tlie 
 amount of our admiration, but he would plead 
 with us again to have always in remembrance 
 "these things" which concern life and salvation ; 
 or as Paul elsewhere says, '• By which ye are 
 saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached 
 unto you," (1 Cor. 15 ;) or as the Divine Master 
 himself said, after his resurrection, to his disci- 
 ples: "These are the words whicli I spake unto 
 von while I was vet w^ith you . . . and ye are 
 witnesses of tliese tilings." (Luke 24.) 
 
 Whatever helped to make a minister efiicient 
 whilst living, will contribute to enforce and pro- 
 long his influence after his decease. The remem- 
 brance of the truth he ministered will be assisted 
 by the remembrance of all that qualified him for 
 his usefulness and characterized it; by all that 
 marked him as desii^ned and authorized to be an 
 ambassador of Christ. We may hope, therefore, 
 to aid the practical and permanent objects before 
 us this day and not depart from their legitimate 
 connection with the Lord's day and the Lord's 
 house, by adverting to some of those particulars in 
 which we may discern the arrangements f)f Provid- 
 ence to qualify our deceased brother for tlie work 
 
ALWAYS IN" REMEMBRANCE. 31 
 
 assigned him, and which were completed and 
 crowned in his ministry with this cono:reo:ation. 
 
 The besrinnina-s of these Providential desio^ns 
 are to be traced to his pious ancestry, and above 
 all, to his iintnediate parentage. Inheriting the 
 Christian birthright through both lines of descent, 
 grandson of the country pastor whose name he 
 bore, and whose venerable person is an historical 
 portrait in our literature''"" — it is as the son of 
 Archibald and Janetta Alexander, that we of 
 this day are assured that it was his lot not only 
 to be baptized in the name, but trained in the 
 nurture and admonition of the Lord Jesus. It 
 was while his eminent father was yet President 
 of Hampden Sidney College, that this son was 
 born, (March 13, 1804,) at the house of his grand- 
 father, Waddel, in Louisa ; but he was only in 
 his fourth year when tlie residence of the fai^iily 
 was removed to Philadelphia, (December, 1807,) 
 and he w^as not nine when (July, 1812,) they re- 
 moved to Princeton, upon the opening of the 
 Theological Seminary. 
 
 The love for his native southern State and for 
 the city of his childhood in the Middle States, 
 lefc marks on his character which show^ that these 
 early footsteps of his life had their influence in 
 expanding his patriotic and Christian aifections 
 
 * Wirt's British Spy. 
 
32 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 beyond any sectional or local limits ; a quality 
 of indispensable consequence to tlie preparation 
 for a ministry whicli is to know no man after 
 the flesh, and to be governed by none of the pre- 
 judices or fanaticisms so apt to grow out of tlie 
 associations of one's continued residence in the 
 spot of his nativity, and inexperience in tlie actual 
 condition of society in other sections. 
 
 His education in the College of ]N^ew-Jersey, 
 in the close association of his family with the 
 Tlieological school, and the comparatively few 
 students of its flrst years, is to be regarded among 
 the preliminary steps of the 3'outli in the coui'se 
 of Divine designation. That designation was as 
 yet concealed ; for whilst every thing in the lite- 
 rary and religious life around him, in his own 
 dwelling and in the public institutions and men 
 which give fame to the village, was as favorable 
 as outward circumstances could be to the highest 
 intellectual excitement and the earliest religious 
 impressions, it was not until his college course 
 was closing, that he became thoroughly awak- 
 ened to his great advantages and responsibilities 
 in either respect. I>ut even then, he was only in 
 his seventeenth year. At that period, having 
 been graciously brought to a cle:ir ap}>rehension 
 of his spiritual condition, he made his first pub- 
 lic profession of laith. (April, 1821.) 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 83 
 
 It was while at College that the saving change 
 occurred ; and the language of a letter written 
 some time afterward strikingly coincides with the 
 sentiments of his dying-bed, when he says : 
 " There can not certainly be on earth any greater 
 pleasure than to see without doubt one's self con- 
 demned jnstly by God's law, and at the same 
 time saved freely by the sovereign mercy of God 
 in Christ. The satisfaction which I then felt in 
 committing all my cares and concerns, my soul 
 and body into the hands of a Saviour whose infi- 
 nitely lovely character I then saw, I never expect 
 to receive from any other source." How similar 
 in sentiment is this to the expression of his last 
 hours ! "If tlie curtain were now to drop and 
 I were this moment ushered into the presence of 
 my Maker, I would first prostrate myself in an 
 nnutterable sense of my nothingness and guilt ; 
 but second!}', I would look np to my Redeemer 
 with an inexpressible assurance of faith and 
 love." 
 
 Immediately after his graduation, (August, 
 1820,) he betook himself to a course of private 
 study of the subject he had slighted in College. 
 He gave two years to this object, and principally 
 to classical reading, before entering the third 
 class of the Theological school, which he did in 
 the autumn of 1822 ; taking np his abode, like 
 9-:f 
 
34 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 the students from abroad, in the edifice itself. 
 The letters of his years in the Seminary are elo- 
 (}uent with description of his enjoyment of the 
 studies and of the companionship of the band of 
 congenial minds, with whom the topics of the 
 class-room were subjects of animated discussion in 
 their more private and social encounters. Those 
 unrestrained communications also reveal the dis- 
 cipline by which the heart of the future preacher, 
 pastor, and consoler, was learning how to speak 
 to multitudes from the resources of a deep per- 
 sonal experience. Even in that early period of 
 liis life, he was becoming acquainted with the 
 violent and sudden alternations to which his del- 
 icate tem])erament continued subject, from the 
 highest pitch of joyous excitement to the depths 
 of melancholy and indescribable misery. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, it is a somewhat i)ainful, yet 
 in all respects an impressive and interesting reflec- 
 tion for those who have obtained so iriucli relief, 
 so much sympathy, so much instruction from the 
 tenderness ofyour late pastor, from the heart-reach- 
 ing power of his discourses, his conversations, his 
 whole intercourse, to know that to (jualifyhim for 
 this service, the wise and gracious foresight of 
 Almighty God saw it necessary to lead his disci- 
 ple from his earliest Christian walk, in the path 
 of some of the most poignant and overwhelming 
 
ALWAYS IX REMEMBRANCE. 35 
 
 distresses that can oppress the liiiman soul. 
 Ascribe it to what immediate cause we may, to 
 delicate or disordered nerves, to morbid sensibil- 
 ities, whether physical or moral, to excessive in- 
 tellectual excitement, to preternatural suscepti- 
 bility to the extremes of enjoyment and suffering, 
 we know from the result, that this part of expe- 
 rience familiar to him in a greater or less meas- 
 ure from his youth to his last days, was the means 
 sanctified to the production and maintenance of 
 that depth, fullness, and richness of his spiritual 
 traits, which laid the foundation of and gave the 
 predominant characteristics and direction to his 
 piety and his influence. For you — for us all — he 
 thus suffered ; through these sufferings he was 
 borne by the same grace which meted them out, 
 so that I do not believe that the Apostle Paul 
 could sa}^ with more grateful consciousness than 
 could your pastor : " Blessed be God, even the 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 
 mercies, and the God of all comfort ; who com- 
 forteth us in all our tribulation, tliat we may be 
 able to comfort them which are in any trouble, 
 by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are com- 
 forted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ 
 abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth 
 by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for 
 your consolation and salvation, which is effectual 
 
36 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 in the eudurin^^ of the same sufferino^s which we 
 also suffer ; or whether we be comforted, it is for 
 your consolation and salvation." 
 
 Think of this fact, mj brethren, in estimating 
 both what it cost to provide you with such a Pas- 
 tor as you have had, and what responsibility you 
 are under now — after liis decease — to have in 
 your remembrance the rich fruits of such a pain- 
 ful culture. Tliese were among the signs of his 
 calhng to the disci pi eship and apostleship of the 
 cross. He bore in his body the marks of the 
 Lord Jesus. {Gal. 6.) But he could continue, 
 till the close of his suffering life, to adopt, as he 
 did thirty-live years ago, the expressions of Mad- 
 ame Guion's hymn, in Cowper's translation, when, 
 personifying Sorrow, it says: 
 
 *' It costs me no regret that she 
 TVho followed Christ should follow me : 
 
 And though where'er slie goes, 
 Thorns spring spontaneous at her feet, 
 I love her — and extract a sweet 
 
 From all my bitter woesi" 
 
 And witli equal sincerity he appropriated these 
 otlier lines from the same hands: 
 
 " Long plunged in sorrow, I resign 
 Mv soul to that dear hand of thine, 
 
 Without reserve or fear ; 
 That han i shall wipe my streaming eyes, 
 Or into smiles of glad surprise, 
 
 Transform the fallinsr tear. 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRAXCE. oi 
 
 " My soul's possession is thy love ; 
 In eanli beneath, or heaven above 
 
 I have no other store : 
 And though with fervent suit I pray, 
 And importune thee night and day, 
 I ask thee nothing more." 
 
 After about two years' industrious application 
 in the Seminary he took advantage of an unex- 
 pected opening for the improvement of himself 
 simultaneously in learning and teaching, by his 
 appointment as tutor in the College, first of ma- 
 thematics, then of the languages, (1824:.) This 
 position involved him in many petty troubles an- 
 noying to one of his temperament, but as he 
 wrote'^at the time: "I need to be buffeted 
 about a little, to call forth what little energy and 
 firmness I may possess." Here is another item, 
 not too insignificant to be regarded in the work 
 of his preparation for the life of a pastor ; that 
 of counteracting his natural tendency to shrink 
 from every thing like authority or discipline over 
 others. So earnestly did he apply himself to 
 meet the demands of his office, that he gave six 
 and a half hours daily to his own private studies 
 besides what was required in the recitation-room. 
 These pursuits were not lost upon the discipline 
 of a mind preparing, as the event has proved, for 
 the logical, clear, precise statements and argu- 
 ments of gospel preaching, and its defence by the 
 pen, in a style so truly classical. 
 
38 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 It was just at this period, too, that liis personal 
 Cliristian experience passed tlirongli such a taste, 
 as lie said, of the terrors of the Lord, that ir 
 seeme<l to him, at the time, as if he had known 
 nothing before of true conversion. But now he 
 writes, (July 10, 1824 :) " I have finally been 
 humbled b}^ the prostration of m}^ own will, 
 which has been since birth, free only to evil, to 
 the point of entire submission to God. . . . God 
 has in mere}" brought me to a view of my utter 
 impotence, of the justice of the law which would 
 condemn me to eternal wrath, and of my being 
 lielpless in the hands of an Almighty avenger. 
 Henceforth my single aim is to submit myself to 
 God as an instrument in his hands to be used for 
 what he chooses. Death would be a release, 
 should it come this instant; and except to do God's 
 work, I desire not to breathe another moment." 
 
 The occupations of the tutorship did not inter- 
 rupt his theological reading, nor prevent his giv- 
 ing time to the acquisition of several modern 
 languages, natural science and general literature, 
 lie had also begun to employ his ])on in c<uiti-i- 
 butions to a variety of periodical works, religious 
 and literary. Tims his skill in writing and his 
 literary accomplishments were providing I'or the 
 grace, polish and relinement which were to do so 
 much to commend the liighest truth to masses of 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 89 
 
 liearers and readers. It is curious for us in this 
 connection to find him say in a letter of Decem- 
 ber, 1824:: "I tried my abilities at preaching the 
 other night at the Preaching Society of the Semi- 
 nary. It was the first regular sermon I ever 
 wrote." Perhaps it will not seem less curious to 
 hear him say some months later: " Nothing to 
 which I put my hand ever dissatisfied me so 
 much as sermon-writing. I am enough chagrined 
 after every effort of this kind to throw the thing 
 in the fire. Whatever complacency I ma}^ feel 
 in any thing else, my sermons are truly mortify- 
 ing to me." 
 
 The next step in his preparation for the serv- 
 ice to which the divine purpose was guiding him, 
 was his obtaining the practice and experience of 
 a pastor, in the comparatively small and secluded 
 bounds of a country congregation. Having been 
 licensed by the Presbytery of N"ew-Brunswick, 
 (October 4, 1825,) he spent some months in Ma- 
 ryland and Virginia, and declining a call to be 
 colleague of the late Dr. Glendy, in Baltimore, 
 he was ordained by the Presbytery of Hanover, 
 and installed over the church in Charlotte Court 
 House. (March 3, 1827.) 
 
 Short as was the term of this engagement, the 
 young minister learned valuable lessons in active 
 parochial life, and in the practice of preaching 
 
40 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 sermons which there was not time to write. Here, 
 too, he underwent the salutary discipline of a 
 serious illness, which compelled him to return to 
 the Xorth, and finally to resign his charge. This 
 made an interruption of a year in his capacity for 
 active labor. But the time was not lost. His 
 faith Jiad a stern probation, and it came all the 
 stronger prepared for future trials, for a more 
 solemn, earnest treatment of the work of life, and 
 for a more sympathetic intercourse with the af- 
 flicted. " Death'' (this was his testimony at the 
 time) " has been viewed by me as a precious en- 
 trance into eternal bliss." 
 
 "When he resumed his public services, (Janua- 
 ry, 1S29,) it was as pastor of what was then the 
 only Presbyterian congregation in Trenton, Xew- 
 Jersey. There he continued four years — years, 
 like all the others of his Christian life, marked 
 by the most industrious and varied occupations, 
 by a zealous and successful ministry, by progres- 
 sive spiritual experience, and in his domestic life 
 by the blending of great joys with great afilic- 
 tions. During this period, besides his stated em- 
 ployment as a pastor, lie had the editorial care 
 of the BlUical litjyeriory^ and was the largest 
 contributor to its pages. He was then also em- 
 ploved in that series of writins^s for the vouui' 
 and for the plans which specially contemplate 
 
ALWAYS IX REMEMBRANCE. 41 
 
 their benefit, which gave him, for the rest of his 
 life, an intimate connection with the American 
 Sunday-School Union. This predisposition and 
 its cultivation by him, deserve to be remembered 
 among the means of his pastoral efiiciency. Tou 
 know how he loved vour children ; how he souo:ht 
 to do them good ; what anxieties he showed for 
 the youth of this congregation, with all their 
 privileges, and for the youth of this city, with all 
 their exposures and destitutions. You know how 
 he worked and pleaded for the promotion of re- 
 ligious instruction and early piety here, and for 
 the excitement of every patriotic, philanthropic, 
 and religious motive to provide for the universal 
 extension of Christian education. IS^one know 
 better than the children and the young men 
 here, how he loved the souls of j^outh, ^^earned 
 for their salvation and trembled for their perils. 
 This object always gave a direction to his labors, 
 caused him to simplify his presentation of truth, 
 and increased the tenderness of his spirit towards 
 his people as families. 
 
 It was while in Trenton that he tried to stir up 
 others to do what in subsequent years he himself 
 did so well, when he asks, " Could not a series 
 of ' Letters to Working Men' be put in some 
 popular journal, commending honest labor, as- 
 sertino' the rio-hts of mechanics, but unveilino- 
 
42 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 the defonnitj of the levelliii^i^ system V wliich 
 he apprehended was about to inflict irreparable 
 damage, moral as well as political, on our coun- 
 try. This was the germ of the thoughts and 
 counsels that are now so attractively realized in 
 the volumes of "The American Mechanic" and 
 *' The AYorking Man." It was while at Trenton 
 that he was for some time employed on a labor- 
 ious commentary on the Gospels, intended for 
 Sunday-schools, but abandoned on finding that 
 another hand (the Eev. Mr. Barnes) had under- 
 taken a similar work. His pen was never at 
 rest. In prose and poetry, in books, reviews, and 
 fugitive pieces; in translations from the Latin 
 and German ; in copious notes on his reading, 
 which was in all departments of knowledge ; in 
 sermons and letters, his manuscript work was 
 already portending the vast bulk it attained. 
 With it all he never intermitted the daily study 
 of the Scriptureri in both the originals ; and as 
 he generally observed a metliodical theological 
 course in his morning discourses, he maintained 
 through the week a continuous systematic study of 
 divinity. His theological studies were at all 
 times almost purely exegetical. To discover, 
 by original research, the meaning of the Bible, 
 was his first aim ; and human opinions in the 
 shape of bodies of divinity, or commentaries, 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 43 
 
 were only jiccepted by liim as auxiliary to his in- 
 dependent research. The Greek Concordance 
 was his great Commentary. His favorite re- 
 ligious reading was Biography and Experimental 
 Piety. " 'No works," he observed, " have ever 
 given me healthier impulses in my religious 
 course than those of the En owlish Xonconformists 
 of the seventeenth century." Tiie type, alike of 
 his Theology and Piety, is indicated by this al- 
 lusion to his choice books. I may further define, 
 once for all, what I believe to have been his posi- 
 tion to the last on these points, by referring to 
 Eussell's ' Letters Practical and Consolatory,' 
 published in Edinburgh about 1S30, and of 
 whicli he said in 1S3J:: " I have read no human 
 production which comes nearer my views of 
 Calvinism : it is theology witliout one shred of 
 scholasticism ; orthodoxy without one film of 
 mystification ; purity without one knot of ecclesi- 
 astical liarshness.'' This opinion of a work, so 
 unpretending in its design, is eminently demon- 
 strative of what was your Pastor's estimate of an 
 experimental above a merely technical theology, 
 and of what was the habit of his mind to find the 
 strongest attractions of the Gospel, in its charac- 
 ter as at once " practical" and " consolatory." 
 All this, too, with the full erudition and power 
 that when occasion came, showed that if he was 
 
4:4 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 not a polemic by practice, it was not for want of 
 the requisite ability. 
 
 To return to the narrative of liis course in 
 Trenton, (which may also be taken as marking 
 the general course of his pastorates afterwards,) 
 I remark that all his eno^asjements were not at 
 the expense of his more immediate duties as a 
 pastor, is attested by the congregation, who re- 
 member his punctual and earnest exercises, 
 whenever his healtli did not arrest them. We 
 may learn something of his methods and dili- 
 gence by such a paragraph as this in a letter to a 
 friend in 1S31 : " My breast is quite sore with the 
 unintermitted exertion of lungs in singing and 
 prayer and talking. . . . For the last six 
 evenings I have attended meetings in different 
 precincts. Last Sunday afternoon I preached to 
 tlie convicts in the State's prison. I think 1 
 never felt more the unspeakable privilege of 
 preaching tlie unsearchable riches of Christ. 
 Last week I conversed with tliose who are in the 
 cells. ... I have made some fruitless at- 
 tempts to have a Bible-class among the blacks. . . . 
 Since I lived in Virginia I feel a peculiar yearn- 
 ing over these poor creatures, and sometimes feel 
 as if I could joyfully devote myself to laboring 
 among them." 
 
 It is twenty-eight years since the social meet- 
 
ALWAYS IN EEMEMBRANCE. 45 
 
 ings referred to in tliis passage were held, but 
 within a week I liave heard one of the many, 
 who will ever remember him as their father in 
 Christ, say, in the recollection of those occasions : 
 " Oh ! how he nsed to sing ! I can novr hear his 
 clear, loud voice leading the hymn : 
 
 ' Hearts of stone, relent ! relent !' " 
 
 In a letter of a later date than the one I have 
 just quoted, alluding to his having declined an 
 invitation to preach for a vacant congregation in 
 one of the largest cities, he says : " If I am to be 
 a pastor, and nothing but necessity could make 
 nie willing to be any thing else, I believe I have 
 more openings to serve Christ here than in any 
 more laborious charge. I have counted up about 
 fifty persons with whom I have had religions con- 
 versation, and who are more or less tender. I 
 have an access to them which no other person 
 could have for a long time, and which I should 
 not have to the same number elsewhere." You 
 \v\l\ recognize in another sentence a peculiarity 
 of your deceased pastor which was as marked in 
 his latest as in his earliest years of pastoral 
 connection. " Some of my most delightful hours 
 have been spent in sick-rooms, by dying-beds, 
 or among poor, unlettered believers, or especi- 
 ally in rejoicing with them that do rejoice for 
 
46 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 the tirst time in Christ." Yet, lie who had such 
 a lieart in his work, who was doing so much in 
 spite of a feeble constitution, and had such testi- 
 monies to his efficiency, was aspiring to perform 
 so much more than he could do, and was so im- 
 patient to see the awakening of all the souls about 
 him, that he was constantly bewailing his lack 
 of love for souls, the unprotitableness of his min- 
 istry, and his insignificance as a Christian work- 
 man : shrinking, as it were, into obscurity, from 
 which, never his own seeking — only a compulsory 
 Providence dislodged him. 
 
 By these experiences his soul w^as attaining to 
 deeper humility, his affections to greater tender- 
 ness, his zeal for the kingdom of heaven rising 
 and expanding with his labors. Forget not, my 
 brethren, as we thus follow his path, the main 
 design of our undertaking — to keep you in mind 
 of what is to grow out of all this training for his 
 best days in your service, and to be had in re- 
 membrance by your souls, now after his decease, 
 as you will have to answer at the great day. 
 
 And the spiritual mind, as is so common in the 
 ways of Providence, was still nurtured by pain- 
 ful trials. It was at this period of his life that 
 he received from the Lord that most precious of 
 his domestic blessings which was so graciously 
 spared to him to the last — his happy marriage — 
 
ALWAYS IN EEMEMBRANCE. 47 
 
 but it was now also that sorrowful, often agoniz- 
 ing, years were laid to his lot in the sulierings 
 and death of children — an anguish to which no 
 parental heart could be more sensitive than his. 
 "How it is with others," he remarked, "I can 
 not tell ; but it seems to me that I need a con- 
 stant series of inward or outward conflicts to 
 make me value Divine comforts." 
 
 To the trials and the training of that day must 
 be added those which a temper so peaceful and 
 charitable as his suffered, not so much from the 
 merits of the polemical controversy which then 
 arose in our Church, and afterwards divided it, 
 as from the spirit with which it was too often 
 waged ; so that he was sometimes constrained to 
 exclaim : '' The greatest heresy is want of love." 
 " Oh ! for a cycle of peace," he exclaimed ; " Oh ! 
 for a breathing-spell from these unnatural con- 
 tentions ! I feel as if I could join with any who 
 would humbly unite in direct and kind efforts to 
 save sinners and relieve human misery. Can not 
 a poor believer go along in his pilgrimage hea- 
 venward, without being always on military duty ? 
 At judgment, I heartily believe, that some here- 
 sies of heart and temper will be charged as worse 
 than heavy doctrinal errors. To you (he adds 
 to his correspondent) I may say this, because you 
 understand me as holding, not merely that the 
 
48 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 tenets of our Church are true, but that they are 
 very important. But I see how easy it is to 
 * hold the truth ' in rancor and liate, which is 
 the grand error of depraved human nature." 
 These few lines may be taken as exhibiting the 
 moral position which he occupied throughout the 
 conflict of that day ; and this is sutficient for the 
 lio-lit in which we are now viewins^ him. It is 
 more to my purpose to remark, that if he learned 
 more than ever before of the spiritual evil of pre- 
 judice, uncharitableness, bigotry — more of the 
 weakness of good men under the excitement of 
 the best motives — more of the evils of strife and 
 contention — more of the importance of the mind's 
 beinix well c^rounded in sound doctrine as to all 
 essential truth, and the heart at the same time 
 moulded to the love and charity of the Gospel, 
 then his own painful exercises during that crisis 
 were parts of his discipline for the defence and 
 exemplification of that meekness and forbearance 
 towards all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in 
 sincerity, which marked his intercourse, in the 
 larsfe field of this citv, withevanij^elical ministers 
 and Christians of every name, and his sympathy 
 with every project which his judgment approved, 
 where co-workers of all such denominations were 
 combined. How truly catholic was his spirit 
 was shown, not in the declamations of the public 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 49 
 
 platform, nor perhaps in making what is called 
 the union principle a point of zeal as always the 
 best system of doing good, so much as in his 
 freedom as an ecclesiastic from prejudice and 
 envy, and more especially in his love of holding 
 fellowship with, and deriving instruction from, 
 the unlimited host of good men and practical and 
 devotional writers of all ages and connections. 
 Wherever there was warmth, earnestness, sim- 
 plicity — wherever there was the spirit of Christ, 
 there was his heart and liand, and I mav em- 
 phatically add, his voice ; singing with Wesley, 
 or Luther, or Gerhardt, or even from the Brevi- 
 ary, as fervently as with Toplady or Watts ; and 
 literally praying " with all prayer and supplica- 
 tion," W'herever, in old time or in late, in written 
 form or in the gush of the rudest unpremedita- 
 tion, he found disciples whom Jesus had taught 
 how to pray. 
 
 It was the fruit of this enlarged and compre- 
 hensive spirit of Charity that we are called upon 
 to have in remembrance now, after his decease, 
 for our own following, as he in it so followed 
 Christ. You have seen how this spirit won his 
 way among all Christian people, gained their con- 
 fidence, disarmed sectarian mistrust in hearing or 
 reading him, and thus multiplied the immber of 
 those who will ever bless God for such a minis- 
 
 8 
 
50 HA-VE THESE THINGS 
 
 ter and author. In his practice he gave great 
 weight to the axiom : " Tlie servant of the Lord 
 must not strive, but be gentle unto all men . . . 
 patient : in meekness instructing those that op- 
 pose themselves." (2 Tim. 2.) And, therefore, 
 he would say even of those whose religion was 
 most antagonistic to his own : " If, instead of re- 
 viling the Catholics, we would surpass them in 
 schools, in personal cliarities, in persevering mis- 
 sions, and in the preparation of our ministers, I 
 believe we should make more head against them." 
 Discouraging or refusing applications from 
 other quarters of much more prominence, your 
 Pastor remained in Trenton, until his declining 
 health demanded a suspension of pastoral cares ; 
 and after some hesitation betvv^een his appoint- 
 ment as a Secretary of his favorite institution, 
 the Sunday-School Union, and the offer of the 
 editorial charge of The Presbyterian^ in Phila- 
 delphia, he chose the latter, (1833.) This post 
 gave him a few months of more direct experience 
 in the general interests of the Church, and of the 
 wide-spread and multifarious observation which 
 a religious journalist must exercise. But he 
 thouglit that a less vexatious, and more retired 
 department would be better suited to his taste 
 and circumstances ; and therefore, in the course 
 of the lirst year of his occupation as an editor. 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 51 
 
 lie consented to take the chair of Rhetoric and 
 Belles Lettres, in his own beloved College. 
 
 The eleven years (1833-1811) which were then 
 passed in Princeton, though they were withdrawn 
 from the more direct work of the ministry, and 
 this solely on account of the infirmities of his 
 health, were not absorbed in his literary oflice, 
 or lost to the higher interests of the Church, or 
 to his prospective position in it. His corre- 
 spondence, throughout that period, has less of the 
 tone of the mere scholar or professor, than of a 
 minister who, in season and out of season, was 
 seeking to spread divine knowledge and to save 
 souls. Submitting patiently to the Providential 
 suspension of his employment as a Pastor, and 
 doing all that industry could do for the faithful 
 discharge of his duties as an instructor, yet one 
 wdio did not know his professional position, would 
 conclude from his letters, that he was in the cen- 
 tre of weighty and immediate responsibilities for 
 multitudes. His mind labored with schemes for 
 the diffusion of healthful and conservative influ- 
 ences throughout all classes of society. The 
 threatenings of infidelity and social disorgani- 
 zation, aroused his anxious efforts to interpose the 
 Bible and Christianity as the only effectual anti- 
 dote. His main hopes rested in the making of 
 Holy Scripture the great organ of mental and 
 
52 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 spiritual development in education. And this, 
 as usual with him, was a practical opinion. He 
 was all the time working in that field : writing 
 for children, for vounor men, for Sandav-schools ; 
 and his publications of every sort will be found 
 marked with that strong impress of his theory, 
 itself derived from revelation, (for he never was 
 a schemer, I that drauglits, pure, direct, and con- 
 stant, from the fountain of inspired truth, are the 
 most salutary and only sufficient remedy for the 
 evils of the times. To this great result were the 
 incessant productions of his pen addressed, from 
 the series of miniature toy-books for infants, and 
 the Sunday-school ''Introduction to the Scrip- 
 tures,** to such profound dissertations as the paper 
 on ''Transcendentalism,'* in the Rejjertory. the 
 joint production of himself and the late Professor 
 Dod, the force and ability of which have made it 
 celebrated as an Evangelical weapon, as well as 
 an exploit in the field of metaphysics. Besides 
 the frequent assistance given, during his profes- 
 sorship, to his brethren in their pulpits, he stat- 
 edly supplied, for seven years, the colored con- 
 gregation of Princeton, thus putting himself into 
 contact with a class of persons whose circum- 
 stances made his ministry among them a school 
 to himself of the simplicity, so important for 
 every class, but so liable to be forgotten, if not 
 despised, by the scholar. 
 
ALWAYS IN" [remembrance. 53 
 
 Who can fail to see in this portion of his life 
 the Providential orderinor of circumstances to 
 strengthen and expand his philanthropy, and at 
 the same time to qualify him for his own active 
 exercise of it, on a larger field, and for its more 
 practical inculcation on others ? Have the young 
 men of this congregation, and of this city, and I 
 might include in the address the young men 
 every where who have caught the spirit of his 
 writings, reflected that he who threw so much 
 energy and love into their special service, was 
 placed by the hand of Providence — by a dispen- 
 sation that seemed at the time disastrous — in 
 daily intercourse with scores of young men, far 
 from their homes, as their teacher, as the ob- 
 server of their minds, dispositions, weaknesses, 
 dangers, their good points and their bad, to raise 
 his qualifications to the maturity of which it was 
 to be your privilege to reap the fruits ? And will 
 you not, in the remembrance of these things, 
 after his decease, feel, that, not as a compliment 
 to his memory, not merely as a tribute of your 
 pei-sonal gratitude, but out of most solemn recog- 
 nition of the hand of God in the whole career of 
 your departed friend and Pastor, preceding 
 the bringing of his full and ripe mind to your 
 service — will you not feel that to forget this now, 
 to neglect it because he has gone, to do any 
 
Oi HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 thinor but strive the more earnestly to hold fast 
 and improve what you have received, will be a 
 raonrnful, a perilous slight pat upon himself, and 
 above all, upon the grace of God, which ex- 
 pended so much to make him what he was to 
 you ( 
 
 In the Divine purposes, fifty-five years were as- 
 signed for the life-time of this his servant. Forty 
 of these had now passed in one steady progress 
 of development to the maturity of character and 
 of capacity, and at least half of that term in act- 
 ive usefulness. Fifteen — only fifteen — remained. 
 1 et even fifteen years is a long space in human 
 life. Ions: enouorh when it is all industriously 
 consecrated, and under favorable circumstances, 
 to make impressions of which centuries shall not 
 see the end. Luther, though he died at sixtv- 
 three, did his predestined work in fifteen years. 
 
 And where were the qualifications, whose pro- 
 jrress we have been indicatingr. so likely to find a 
 theatre for their most complete and permanent 
 inflnence, as in this metropolis i AVhat circum- 
 stances could be more favorable for converging 
 the various kinds of talents, acquirements, habits, 
 associations, and experience, which had been 
 combined in the whole preceding career, than 
 those which brought him to the Duane street 
 conorrefiration in 1S44 — and then, after the neces- 
 
ALWAYS IX REMEMBRANCE. 55 
 
 sary interval of rest, furnished by liis two years' 
 retirement to the chair in the Theological Semi- 
 nary at Princeton, (lSi9-lS51,) and an exhila- 
 rating voyage to Europe, restored him to his 
 pastoral work here, in 1851 ? These and sub- 
 sequent interruptions of his employment as 
 Pastor, let me here say, were submitted to by 
 him as sacrifices, and only in obedience to the 
 duty of preserving his life. When elected to the 
 Seminary, in 181:9, he spok« of '• the anguish of 
 a separation from my charge, if I accept ;" and 
 said: ''To liioic that I might remain here, [in 
 Duane street,] would be a joy unspeakable. Xo 
 dreams of mine respecting the social happiness 
 of the pastoral relation, have failed to be realized." 
 He wrote at the same crisis: "I have seen that my 
 powers were tasked to a tension which must soon be 
 fatal: while in the steadier routine of teaching, I 
 might last a season with ordinary favor of Provi- 
 dence.'' I quote this to show how peremptory was 
 the necessity of his having relaxation at the time, 
 and how graciously a door was opened, which at 
 once gave him relief, supplied an important sta- 
 tion for the benefit of the Church at large, added 
 to his learninor, revived his interest in the risino^ 
 ministry, and prepared him to return to the city, 
 and give the last eight years of his strength and 
 life to the o:reat work reserved for him here. 
 
56 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 I deliberately pronounce it a great work, and 
 great not only in the scheme of it, but in its ac- 
 complishment. For when we take into consider- 
 ation what it was to form a new congregation here; 
 to till this spacious' edifice ; to gather a band of 
 seven hundred communicants ; to form and 
 maintain a successful Mission church ; to attract 
 and keep a large bod}^ of young men ; to not 
 merely win the acceptance, but engage the co- 
 operation of so many, of every age, in his enter- 
 prises of doing good ; to enlist so mucli zeal, and 
 to draw out so much liberality ; to satisfy such a 
 miscellaneous multitude of hearers ; to establish 
 a name and influence outside of his own people, 
 and acknowledged by the community of all 
 classes and denominations — I say, this, that by 
 the favor of God he accomplished, was a great 
 work, in a little time. These walls, this registry 
 of communicants and pew-holders, would not de- 
 fine the limits of your Pastor's zeal, or of his suc- 
 cess. His soul suffered at the sight of the desti- 
 tutions, bodily, social, and spiritual, of the large 
 population of this city, and was always j^raying 
 to know what he should do for them, and sigh- 
 ing that so little seemed practicable. Willingly 
 would he have thrown open all these seats for 
 the ])oor. He longed to see the day when 
 churches should be as free as the parks or the 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 57 
 
 streets to all who would come in. Never was he 
 more animated than when originating or assisting 
 some method of reaching the ignorant, degraded, 
 neglected. His philanthropy was more than a 
 lament, a prayer, a whine, a pulpit theory, an 
 anniversary oration, a newspaper rhapsody. He 
 not only talked, but acted, and not only acted, 
 but loved to act ; was not only skillful in direct- 
 ing the benevolence of others, but was himself 
 benevolent, and often did the part of benevolence 
 which is far more laborious and self-denying than 
 that which is accomplished by mere giving — 
 though it is not too much to say that his own 
 personal unpublished charities were fully equal, 
 accordino^ to the scale of means, to what his in- 
 fluence obtained from others. 
 
 In estimating his work in this city, what might 
 I not say of the effect of his personal character, 
 and that, too, as one of the products of Divine 
 grace that qualified him for his position ? How 
 could so much of talents and individual influence 
 have been seen connected with so much of simpli- 
 city, modesty, and spiritual affections, and not 
 have made a constant impression in favor of his 
 preaching ? A minister of the Gospel ma}^ be 
 worldly, may be ambitious, may be covetous, 
 may be luxurious, may be indolent. These are 
 the temptations of a large city to ministers as 
 
 a* 
 
58 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 well as to other men. But perhaps the gracious 
 end of your Pastor's afflictions was in no respect 
 more marked than in the influence they had in 
 keeping him, with all the refinement of his tastes, 
 and all his qualifications for literary and social 
 life, so content with domestic retirement and the 
 plodding routine of his parochial work, so con- 
 scientious and self-denyino^ as to every thinix 
 dangerous or doubtful, so blameless and with 
 such a good report of those who are '■ without." 
 No American ever visited Europe with more ca- 
 pacity to relish its natural scenery, its historical 
 associations, its seats of learning and repositories 
 of the fine arts, its high refinement and culture ; 
 but both his voyages were submitted to as un- 
 welcome but unavoidable separations from his 
 ministry ; and in the language of one of his trans- 
 Atlantic letters, (June, 1857,) he could honestly 
 say, " After all, I would a thousandfold rather be 
 at home !" and lie meant his ecclesiastical home, 
 his parish, more than his domicile, for his fiimily 
 were with him. Xo scholar, more than he, en- 
 joyed the employments of literature, but I be- 
 lieve he could always say, as he did when occu- 
 pying a professor's chair in the College, and at 
 the same time preaching for the blacks once a 
 week : " I believe my happiest hours are spent 
 on Sunday afternoons, in laboring among my 
 little charge." 
 
ALWAYS IN KEMEMBRANCE. 59 
 
 His personal piety had such prominent features 
 that no observer could do otherwise than take 
 knowledge of its depth and uniformity. AVhat 
 habitual reverence ! what eno^ao-edness in wor- 
 ship ! wdiat hearty intentness in every public ex- 
 ercise ! making every one feel that he w^as acting 
 not with the perfunctory solemnity of a sacred 
 office, but with the personal sincerity of one who 
 felt himself to be a sinner, yet a rejoicing believer 
 and a happy worshipper. How the words of 
 Scripture seemed to take the tone of his own ex- 
 perience ! how the pathos of his prayers showed 
 that it was his own soul, as well as yours, he was 
 lifting up to God in confession, praise, and sup- 
 plication ! And who that has heard him, espe- 
 cially in more social assemblies or in tlie worship 
 at his own fireside, or in the room of sickness 
 and the house of affliction, does not remember 
 how his deep absorption in devotion and tlie 
 filial, affectionate nearness of his access to the 
 Father of mercies and God of all comfort, caused 
 him to forget what may be called the conven- 
 tionalities of prayer, and to pour out his soul, in- 
 deed with the most abased humility and pro- 
 found adoration, yet with a directness, familiar- 
 ity, minuteness, freedom of expression, ^vhich was 
 like the interviews of the patriarchs with the 
 Lord God, " face to face as a man speaketh unto 
 
60 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 his friend," (Ex. 33,) or like those of the apostle 
 who leaned on his Lord's bosom at the holy ta- 
 ble. 
 
 In fact, this was the secret of the confidence 
 he inspired, the affection he won, namely, the 
 assurance which all felt that he was what he 
 seemed, that he experienced what he declared, 
 that he exemplified what he taught. It was his 
 personal piety, and its abundant fruits that 
 wrought conviction upon every mind that ob- 
 served him, that his " rejoicing" might be that 
 of the apostle. " The testimony of his conscience 
 that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with 
 fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, he had 
 had his conversation in the world, and more 
 abundantly toward you^ (2 Cor. 1.) Your 
 luxurious hospitalities did not tempt him; the 
 license, so often pleaded in cities against clerical 
 straitness, was not taken advantage of by him ; his 
 private habits continued in the Fifth A venue as sim- 
 ple as they were in Charlotte ; and when he refused 
 your generous proposal to increase his stipend, it 
 was not (as has been said) because the revenue 
 from his office was wholy sufficient of Itself, but 
 because he would do what he could to obviate 
 the popular prejudice on that subject. Should 
 we not acknowledge all this as a gracious endow- 
 ment that was to enable this follower of Ilim who 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 61 
 
 came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
 to commend " tliese things" of the Gospel whicli 
 he preached, to your remembrance after his de- 
 cease ? 
 
 It was this sincerity showing itself in such 
 tender and affectionate sensibility that made its 
 way to every heart. How his eye, his tones, his 
 countenance, his quick attention, testified the 
 delicate tenderness of his inmost soul, when au}^ 
 sorrow, or peril, or joy in another touched his 
 sympathy ! He made you feel that he was in- 
 terested for you, and that his expressions were 
 the feeblest index of the amount of his concern. 
 I am persuaded that neither his outward activi- 
 ty, nor any other demonstrations, revealed fully 
 the extent to which his heart glowed with zeal to 
 see more unity among the followers of Christ, 
 more practical fellowship and cooperation among 
 ministers of the Gospel, especially those of the 
 same communion, more earnest, extended, and 
 indefati stable labor to reach the miseries and sins 
 of such a city as New-York. I am sure it is onl}^ 
 the simple truth I utter when I say that his spirit 
 groaned in witnessing the extension of crime, 
 wretchedness, and unbelief, and in the anxiety to 
 see the whole force of the entire Church of Christ 
 brought out to personal devotedness, by direct 
 activity and humble work, as well as liberal do- 
 
62 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 nations, in the only cause worth living and dj^ing 
 for. 
 
 His views were broad, noble, unselfish, and 
 unjealous. His knowledge was universal.* His 
 character, intellectual and spiritual, was remark- 
 ably complete and uniform ; its symmetrj^ was 
 not broken, ever and anon, by erratic or irregu- 
 gular deviations ; his " this one thing I do," was 
 not some favorite atom occupying his mind b}'' 
 itself, but the one great whole of truth and duty 
 according to the proportions in which it stands in 
 revelation. He was, consequently, eminently 
 safe and worthy of reliance ; and if I may be 
 excused for resorting to a familiar classical 
 phrase to express it, he was, like the " sapiens" 
 of the Roman satirist, in himself complete, pol- 
 ished and round, t a man for the whole Church 
 and f )r all the world. 
 
 And now, my brethren of this congregation, 
 and of this community, having made this too de- 
 sultory sketch of the life and the character of this 
 deceased minister, with the main object in view 
 
 * His father was remarkable for the extent of his information, 
 but I remember once making an inquiry of him, and receiving for 
 a reply : "Ask James, he knows every thing." 
 
 f " In seipso totus, teres atque rotundus, 
 Extern! ne quid valeat per la3ve morari." 
 
 IJor. Sat. ii. "7. 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 63 
 
 of making more impressive a sense of your own 
 privileges and responsibilities, by showing how 
 he w^as trained and guided for your service ; what 
 great endowments he thus acquired to be ex- 
 pended for your benefit ; what a character he by 
 grace attained, to commend to you the religion 
 of which he was a minister ; you must perceive 
 how appropriate is the application of the Apos- 
 tle's sentiment, that now, after the decease of 
 such a Pastor, you should have always in remem- 
 brance just what the Apostle meant by what he 
 called, " tliese things." Five times in this one 
 chapter he uses the same phrase. At every re- 
 petition it is employed to denote the grand prac- 
 tical, indispensable fruits of Gospel truth. "If 
 ' these things' be in you and abound, ye shall 
 not be unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ ; but 
 he that lacketh 'these things' is blind ; if ye do 
 ' these things,' ye shall nev^er fall ; I will not be 
 negligent to put you always in remembrance of 
 ' these things ;' moreover I will endeavor that ye 
 may be able after my decease to have ' these 
 things' always in remembrance." 
 
 They were these things — the great, practical, 
 saving things of Divine revelation — which were 
 most prominent in his preaching ; and if his 
 voice could be heard once more, this day, in the 
 clear, earnest, sincere, affectionate tones in which 
 
6-i HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 you have been accustomed to hear hi in speak to 
 you from this spot, it woukl say : Have these 
 things always in remembrance ; remember ine 
 chietly as the ambassador of Christ to you ; let 
 the messages of truth, which I liave delivered, 
 be the most prominent in your recollections ; 
 think more of Christ than of me ; let not the 
 fondness of your personal regard, and the grief 
 for your loss, cause you to forget, that the im- 
 mutable doctrine I have taught you, survives all 
 inen — is independent of their ministr3^ " I 
 preached not myself, but Christ Jesus, the Lord, 
 and myself, your servant, for Jesus' sake." 
 (2 Cor. 4.) " I have not shunned to declare 
 unto you all the counsel of God." (Acts 20.) 
 Yes, my brethren, you know as well as I do, that 
 if he liad the direction of this day's services, he 
 would have the connection of his name with 
 them used supremely for the purpose of recalling 
 to and impressing on your remembrance the 
 words of Christ. I call npon you, therefore, this 
 solemn day, to consider by what a long, arduous, 
 painful process the Divine Providence qualified 
 your former Pastor to serve you with sucli fidel- 
 ity ; how abundantly he instructed you out of 
 the pure oracles of revealed truth ; how every 
 class, age, and condition of his charge, found in 
 him all tluit can ever be found in such frail 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 65 
 
 vessels as the best of ministers are ; his labors, so 
 extended and adapted that each finds some spe- 
 cial cause to remember what he did for them- 
 selves. I summon you, in the name of Ilim 
 wliose servant he was, to remember how weighty 
 is the obligation on you all to respond to this in- 
 fluence, ilis time was, in your view indeed, la- 
 mentably short ; but it was long enough to make 
 eternal consequences vibrate on the issue as to 
 each soul— of life unto life, or of death unto 
 death. It was long enough, if time were all, to 
 have converted every one to Christ, to have 
 brought every believer to Christ's standard of 
 what his disciples should be. And I am sure, I 
 do not exaggerate the fullness with which he de- 
 clared the whole counsel committed to him, when 
 I say that his preaching, his conversation, his ca- 
 techetical and other instructions of the young, 
 have been sufficient, as to their substance, to ac- 
 complish these results, so far as the administration 
 of the means of grace is sufficient. What a re- 
 flection is this for each member of the congre- 
 gation to make, as you meet to-day, as it were at 
 the silent grave of him who was so lately wear- 
 ing out his very life to do you good ! " My de- 
 ceased Pastor has taught me enough to convert 
 me from the error of my way, and save my soul 
 from death ; he has exhibited, by doctrine and 
 
66 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 by pattern, what I ought to be as a spiritually- 
 minded believer; he has warned me against 
 worklliness and formalism, as the great cankers 
 of piety ; lie has shown me what it is to liv^e in 
 the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God, and 
 the communion of the Holy Ghost ; he lias both 
 testified and exemplified the obligation of i)er- 
 sonal zeal for the kino-dom of tlie Ttedeemer, an 
 untiring, daily concern for the wants and woes of 
 my fellow-men ; in all this, he was not a mere 
 phihanthropist, not a theorist dreaming new de- 
 vices for the remedy of social evils, but an accre- 
 dited representative of Christ and the Gospel, 
 and so speaking the authoritative messages of 
 God himself; and his mission was to me ^' for it 
 he was prepared by Providence through long years 
 of study, of anguish, and the multiform occu- 
 pations and experiences of his life, so that it is, as 
 to my own opportunity and responsibility, as if 
 all this had been done and endured for myself." 
 Keed I follow out these reflections to their ]es:i- 
 timate conclusion ? It is too obvious to be 
 missed, too solemn in the very statement to need 
 enforcement. I charge you then, whilst you 
 weep this day in the afltectionate commemoration 
 of your Pastor, let the great improvement of the 
 event be, to have in remembrance, now after his 
 decease, and always, the things wliich, in the 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 67 
 
 name of his Lord and Master, he spake while he 
 was yet with joii. The highest honor to his me- 
 mory, the best tribute to his character, the most 
 suitable attestation to his fidelity, will be your 
 steadfast adherence to the doctrines delivered to 
 you. This will show that the distinction of his 
 ministry among you was not that of temporary 
 popularity, nor only of personal attachment, but 
 of his having been received by you for the truth's 
 sake — for Christ's sake. 
 
 Some allow themselves to become so attached 
 to a particular minister, that it may almost be 
 said that their religion consists in admiring him. 
 Apart from his preaching, they scarcely recog- 
 nize the value of the ordinances of the Lord's 
 house : and when he is removed, they lament as 
 if nothing was left. But the decease of such a 
 minister is a still louder call on those who have 
 heard him, while living, only to be pleased, but 
 not to be regarded. I am heard by some now 
 who are reminded of his faithful but tender ex- 
 postulations with them in private as well as in 
 public — by notes and letters as well as by pointed 
 sermons : will you not now perceive that God 
 has taken away your human reliance, that he 
 might make you hear more distinctly His own 
 divine voice : removed the human mediator that 
 you might feel that there is in truth but one ef- 
 fectual Mediator, Christ Jesus, and that to Him 
 
68 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 joii must go forthwith and directly ? If joii have 
 neglected jour beloved Pastor, as to the highest 
 purpose for which he was sent to you, beware 
 iiow you now put from your remembrance, after 
 his decease, the things that belong to your peace, 
 and which, otherwise may, like himself, be soon 
 hidden from your eyes. Listen while I repro- 
 duce a few paragraphs from a well remembered 
 and prophetic discourse which he addressed to 
 a congregation in this cit}^, but a few weeks 
 before he left his pulpit to be seen in it no 
 more : " Ministers of the Gospel often lament 
 in secret over the indiii'erencc with which their 
 messages are heard, and sometimes they fore- 
 cast a time, after their decease, when their 
 words may come back to these hearers with a 
 prevailing force. In this way, as well as others, 
 dead ministers continue to preach. It is wise to 
 cherish their memory. Remember, them . . . 
 which have spoken unto you the word of God ; 
 whose faith follow. . . Ah ! my respected but 
 unconverted hearers, we come to you, after many 
 trials of preparation and with much conscious- 
 ness of infirmity, sermon after sermon. Sabbath 
 after Sabbath, month after month, year after 
 year ; we grow gray and feeble waiting on you 
 with the Lord's message, which you will not con- 
 sider ; and then we die and you are released from 
 the distasteful reiteration of warning and entreaty. 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 69 
 
 God grant that the day may not come when you 
 shall gaze on some marble and wish us back ; and 
 when echo shall seem to say with Samuel — 
 ' Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the 
 Lord is departed from thee, and is become thine 
 enemy V Suppose we could return all ghastly to 
 stand beside your death-bed, we could bring you 
 no gospel which you have not rejected. Nothing 
 will have come upon you but that which we had 
 predicted. You have been forewarned ; so was 
 Saul. Hence the prophet whom he invokes says 
 to him : ' And the Lord hath done to him as he 
 spake by me . . . because thou obeyedst not 
 the voice of the Lord.' " 
 
 This comes to you now as a voice from the 
 grave of your Pastor — the very voice you once 
 heard audibly pronounce these very words, and 
 at the sound of which you trembled, but said, 
 " Go thy way for this time " — when you return 
 once more we ^oiU give heed ! 
 
 Turn now, every one who has been under this 
 ministry for years, and only to defer repentance, 
 and then all that we foolishly call the mj^stery of 
 Providence in causing such a saint to be such a 
 sufferer, and in removing him in the very height 
 of his power, will be explained, sufficiently at 
 least for your satisfaction, in making effectual by 
 the fact of his death what failed to be effectual 
 by the continuance of his life. You would not 
 
70 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 turn for the living pastor, oh ! turn now in the 
 remembrance of his warnings, after his decease ! 
 Cherish, people of his charge, cherish and ful- 
 fill his plans. Tliej were the result of long and 
 mature thought, wide observation, long experi- 
 ence, and fervent praj^er, and are not likely to be 
 suddenly or easily improved. By thus building 
 on the foundation he has laid, you may continue 
 to enjoy his wisdom and piety in some of their 
 most substantial effects : and happy will it be if 
 the Timotheus who shall succeed this Paul " shall 
 [in this sense] bring you into remembrance of 
 HIS WAYS wdiich be in Christ," (1 Cor. 4.) as well 
 as in the larger sense, call upon you to remember 
 him who has spoken unto you the w^ord of God ; 
 whose faith follow, considering the end of his con- 
 versation, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and 
 to-day, and forever." (Ileb. 13.) It will then 
 be as if he w^ere still "abiding and continuing 
 with you all for your furtherance and joy of 
 faith :" and it may be, dear brethren, no extrava- 
 gant or unscriptural conception to continue the 
 citation, even thougli we now speak in the name 
 of a minister after his decease — ^" only let your 
 conversation be as it becometh the Gospel of 
 Christ — that whether I come and see you, or else 
 BE ABSENT, I may iiEAii of your affairs, tliat ye 
 stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving 
 together for the faith of the Gospel.'' (Phil. 1.) 
 
ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE. 71 
 
 Oh ! you know that nothing colder than apostol- 
 ic language would express the heartiness, the 
 warmth, of the interest he felt for your souls ! It 
 was with him, as with the writers of the Epistles 
 to the Churches, a labor of love to minister to 
 you. It was without affectation he could address 
 you as " my brethren, dearly beloved and longed 
 for, my joy and crown . . my dearly beloved." 
 (Phil. 4.) " If I be not an apostle unto others, 
 yet doubtless I am to you : for the seal of mine 
 apostleship are ye in the Lord." (1 Cor. 9.) 
 ' We were gentle among you, even as a nurse 
 cherisheth her [own] children ; so being affec- 
 tionately desirous of you, we were willing to 
 have imparted unto you, not the Gospel of God 
 only, but also our own souls, because ye were 
 dear unto us. . . . Ye are witnesses, and God 
 also, how holily and justly and unblamably we 
 behaved ourselves among you that believe : as 
 ye know how we exhorted and comforted and 
 charged every one of you, as a father doth his 
 children, that ye would walk worthy of God, who 
 hath called you unto his kingdom and glory." 
 (1 Thess. 2.) 
 
 Yes, my brethren, we speak of the decease of 
 our beloved Alexander : but the word has lost 
 its true meaning — that of departure — by our cus- 
 tomary associations. It is in the original Exodus, 
 a going out of, the very word used in the nar- 
 
72 HAVE THESE THINGS 
 
 rative of the Transtiguration, when Moses and 
 Elias spoke of the " decease,'' the exodus, the 
 departure, of the Lord Jesus which he should 
 accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9.) The de- 
 cease of Christ was his passage to the Father's 
 glory : it was as one continuous event with his 
 Eesurrection and Ascension. And so, that de- 
 parted but everliving Kedeemer, says this day as 
 truly as when he spoke similar words in Bethany, 
 of one then in his grave, " Our friend Alexander 
 SLEEPETii ; but I go that I may awake him out of 
 sleep.- ' Note how the Son of God identities him- 
 self alike with his living and departed disciples 
 — ''''our friend Lazarus." Then our friend is not 
 dead : he sleej^s and does well : for the Resurrec- 
 tion and the Life, in whom he believed, has de- 
 clared that he " shall never die." Oh ! how such 
 a man must enjoy heaven ! What a relish and 
 capacity for it was his soul acquiring all his life ! 
 What a preparation for this were his years of 
 sorrow and of toil ! Yes ! he was confident he 
 was approaching all this, when he cried: "I 
 know whom I have believed, and am persuaded 
 that he is able to keep that which I have com- 
 mitted unto him against that da3\" (2 Tim. 1.) 
 Here we may well stop. May his God and our 
 God so keep us all, that we fail not to follow him 
 and the happy multitudes who through faitli and 
 patience inherit the promises ! 
 
Inscription on the Tablet erected by the congre- 
 gation on the left of the pulpit of the church : 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 James Waddel. Alexander, D, D., 
 
 FOR Vi YEARS 
 
 THE B K L V E D A N l> K E V E 11 E D P A S '1' R 
 
 OF THIS CHURCH ; 
 
 WHOSE SINOULAR NATURAL GIFTS, 
 
 RIPENED BY GENEROUS CULTURE. 
 
 WERE SUCCESSFULLY GIVEN 
 
 TO HIS SACRED WORK: 
 
 AND WHO, BY HIS FERVENT PIETY, 
 
 PURE LIFE, 
 
 TENDER AFFECTIONS, LARGE BENEVOLENCE, 
 
 AND UNSPARING LABOUR, 
 
 SO ENDEARED HIMSELF TO HIS PEOPLE. 
 
 THAT THEY MOURN 
 
 AS FOR A DEAR BROTHER AND BELOVED FRIEND. 
 
 HE WAS BORN MARCH 13th, 1^.04. 
 
 HE DIED JULY Slt^T, 1859, 
 
 DECLARING, 
 
 AS THE SUM OF HIS FAITH AND HOPE. 
 
 " / know v.'/io/fi I have believed, and am persuaded 
 that he ix able to keep that which I have committed to 
 bint aqainaf that dai/.^^ 
 
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