.1 
 
SERMON 
 
 PREACHED AT 
 
 KING'S CHAPEL, 
 
 SUNDAY MARCH 22, 1874. 
 
 By henry W. FOOTE. 
 
 SERVICES AT THE FUNERAL, 
 
 March 16, 1874. 
 
 PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE lyARDE.VS AMD VESTRY 
 
 Po 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 
 ALFRED MUDGE & SON, 
 
 PRINTERS, 
 
 34 
 
 School Street. 
 
 
 1874. 
 
 
IN MEMORY OF CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED AT 
 
 KING'S CHAPEL. 
 
 SUNDAY, MARCH 22, 1874. 
 
 By henry W. FOOTE. 
 
 SERVICES AT THE FUNERAL, 
 
 March 16, 1874. 
 
 PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE WARDENS AND VESTRY. 
 
 'y> BOSTON: 
 
 ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS, 
 
 34 School Street. 
 
 1874. 
 
£4 IS 
 
SERMON 
 
 " Righteousness exalteth a nation : but sin is a reproach to any 
 people." 
 
 " For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from 
 Jerusalem and from Judah the stay a^id the staff, the whole stay of 
 bread and the whole stay of water, . . . the honorable man 
 and the counsellor, . . . and the eloquent orator." 
 
 " I will make a man more precious than fine gold : even a man 
 than the golden wedge of Ophir." — Prov. xiv : 34 ; Is. iii : i, 3 ; 
 xiii : 12. 
 
 The Old Testament might be called the New Test 
 (if we cared to play upon words), — the most modern 
 touchstone to which we can bring character and duty, 
 public or private. There are those, indeed, who deem 
 it to be obsolete because it is old, — a method of rea- 
 soning which would banish the light of the solar system 
 from the universe, nay, which would abolish the uni- 
 verse itself as utterly antediluvian. But the fathers of 
 New England knew the rock on which they builded, 
 when they strove to found their commonwealth on the 
 eternal principles which they read on the ancient ta- 
 bles of stone; and the living waters of conscience and 
 duty which have quickened the souls of their children. 
 
which are the hope of the republic to-day, have flowed 
 forth from those granitic summits of immemorial law, 
 as the stream gushed forth from the rock which Moses 
 smote. 
 
 There are those, too, who sometimes deem that re- 
 ligion belongs in a region apart from the strifes and 
 questions of political life. And this is partly true. 
 Religion is at home on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 above the smoke of the camp-fires and the noise of con- 
 flicts, where the heaven is nearer; but she does not 
 take men up with her there unless she meets them in 
 the plain, where in the dust and heat of conflict she is 
 a light on their way and an inspiration in their spirit. 
 We should all agree that questions of the da}^ should 
 not be made a religion of; that the church is no place 
 for criminations or discords. But religion should be 
 made a question of the day, — every day. And since 
 she should be the most vital factor in every personal 
 duty, and since no duty is more personal to every 
 man and woman, under a system of government like 
 ours, than that which concerns the public weal, it fol- 
 lows that the church has sometimes the necessity laid 
 upon it of trying to show how religion bears on public 
 duty and public service. And here, again, the Old 
 Testament fairly blazes with light. It may almost be 
 termed the <'rcat Manual of Political Dutv ; and we 
 
need ask no better test of its inspired power to mould 
 humanity towards the ideal future than is afforded by- 
 comparing its starry words, glowing in the firmament 
 of truth with the light of justice and freedom, with the 
 wisest maxims of the masters in statecraft, from Ma- 
 chiavelli's Prince and the Testament of Peter the Great 
 of Russia, to the Bismarckian theory of a diplomacy 
 gangrened with falsehood, or the idea that a nation is 
 to be ruled by packing a caucus. When you come to 
 deal with any question of public morals, or when you 
 seek for words with which to describe a faithful public 
 servant, the difficulty is not how to find, but what to 
 choose, out of the riches of this Old Testament, so New. 
 Our texts strike the chord to which our thousrhts 
 
 o 
 
 must perforce attune themselves to-day, A certain 
 theme is laid down for us by the proud duty which fell 
 to this church of being the voice of this dear old 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts in her public service 
 of mourning for one who had served her so long in 
 the highest office in her gift. I could not, if I would, 
 put aside the task which seems to be written for me in 
 the signs of public mourning which still remain on 
 these walls. 
 
 The part which this church took in those solemn of- 
 fices was due, as you know, not to our basing any claim 
 upon the former connection of Senator Sumner with 
 
 :^ 
 
this church, but to our placing the church at the ser- 
 vice of the State q-overnment for the rites of honor 
 which it sought to render ; and these dark drapings 
 still hdmg here, in sympathy with the legislative vote 
 which retains them at the Capitol during the pe- 
 riod of public mourning, because we were a part of 
 the State and acted for the State. Yet there was a 
 special fitness — a sort of family right — in our associ- 
 ation in those memorable services when the streets of 
 the city were like the aisles of a crowded church, and 
 this house of prayer was as a central chapel. For many, 
 years of his life were rooted in this church ; his father 
 was its clerk during a part of the Senator's childhood ; 
 his mother I knew well, as her pastor, in the gentle 
 loveliness of an old age, subdued by the chastening of 
 many and singular sorrows;* and we have a right to 
 think that probably the clarion call of the Gospel 
 wrought within him, more than he was himself aware, 
 from the Christian teaching of those faithful men and 
 lovers of truth and righteousness whose names are our 
 heritage and our inspiration, t Yet I do not propose 
 to make this the occasion for a Commemorative Dis- 
 course of Eulogy : such a discourse will be given else- 
 where, and by one qualified to speak, — as the legisla- 
 ture may detcrniine. Much has been already f.aid by 
 
 * Sec Note A, appended. 
 t See Note 1\ appended. 
 
distinguished men in public places, and the time for 
 Congressional Eulogy is still to come. My duty here 
 is other than that, — very simple, yet very true. It is, 
 to try to impress on ourselves, while the feeling of the 
 hour is fresh, some of the principles which we need 
 more than ever to insist on in our judgments of pub- 
 lic duty and our actions as faithful citizens. I w^ould 
 say nothing to open old feuds or strifes, now forever 
 silenced ; nor is it needful to stir the embers of that fire 
 of controversy which consumed the nation for so long, 
 — now happily turned to ashes and as far back of us 
 as the flood. I pray that no word of mine may bring 
 us down from the high level of a common sympath}^ in 
 which, as at great moments of our war, the whole heart 
 of this Commonwealth has been melted into one. 
 
 There is, indeed, something sublime in the healing 
 and reconciling work wdiich is wrought by death. Out 
 of that silence comes to us a deeper lesson tl,ian all the 
 voices of life have ever been able to bring home to us. 
 
 " That which the open book could never teach 
 The closed one whispers." 
 
 We feel this wdien we stand beside the humblest and 
 poorest clay that has enshrined an immortal spirit. But 
 how much more when it is one who has been a power 
 in the land, whose name has been a watchword of pas- 
 
 1^ 
 
8 
 
 sionate admiration and of intensest opposition, who has. 
 been a factor in the history of a tremendous period, 
 not to be left out in the tracing of causes and results ! 
 When sudden stillness falls on such a one, and all the 
 tumult of tongues is quieted or turned to a rivalry in 
 praise of things not always so greatly valued while they 
 were with us, how^ falsely does it seem that we speak of 
 him who brings this to pass as " the king of terrors " ! 
 Rather does he seem to come as the angel of peace. 
 And we may well say, with Sir Walter Raleigh, " O 
 eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could 
 advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, 
 thou hath done ; and whom all the world hath flat- 
 tered, thou only hast cast out of the world and de- 
 spised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched 
 greatness, all the pride and ambition of man, and cov- 
 ered it all over with these two narrow words, " Hie 
 jacet!' Yes ! He covers over those things which par- 
 took of mortal weakness and infirmity ; but the 
 things which are immortal, great memories of great 
 gifts, faithful thoughts of faithfulnesses to conscience, 
 tried experience of long fidelity, — these are not cov- 
 ered, but now^ first begin to be revealed and fruitful in 
 the fullest sense, as the seeds of a flower fall from 
 the bursting capsule on fertile ground. 
 
 There is no higher calling in human society than 
 
that of the public service in a nation of freemen. 
 Ambition in this direction is a worthy ambition.* It is 
 the duty of every man that he should be ready to meet 
 the oblio-ation of such service if it comes to him ; we 
 should train our children to this readiness as one of 
 the most imperative duties of manhood. But this 
 ambition may be a lamp to lighten the path of him 
 who walks in it, with lofty purposes, thorough prepa- 
 rations, righteous scorn of every mean and low thing ; 
 or it may be a snare and pitfall to his conscience, 
 causing him to stumble in winding and slippery ways, 
 — if he reach the coveted place only dragging down 
 its honor to his own base level. The one is a noble 
 flame, kindling the spirit to climb the hard 
 
 " Steep, where Fame's proud temple shines afar," 
 
 And to write one's name high among the benefactors 
 of the human race : the other is the degradation and 
 often the ruin of the nation which it plagues. But as 
 the public service is perhaps the highest, and certainly 
 the most shining, so is it also the most difficult 
 
 * This is nobly expressed by Mi'. Sumner : — 
 
 " No true and permanent fame can be founded, except in labors which promote 
 the happiness of mankind." 
 
 In " this true and noble Valhalla will be gathered only those who have toiled, 
 each in his vocation, for the welfare of the race. Mankind will remember those 
 only who have remembered mankind." — ^t^r/C-j, ii ; 32, 44: Oration on Fame 
 and Glory. 
 
lO 
 
 way of duty. I say nothing of the storms of obloquy 
 from foes, or the beclouding influence of flattery from 
 false or unwise friends. These may be hard to endure 
 or to resist ; but the arduousness of high responsi- 
 bility is not here, but in the responsibility itself For 
 consider what various qualifications — and how im- 
 possible to unite in a single person — are demanded 
 to meet all the exigencies of a great place in the 
 councils of a nation. What kind of man should a 
 great people desire to fulfil all the ideal possibilities of 
 high public service ? He should be, should he not, a 
 combination of the recluse scholar and of the practi- 
 cal man of affairs ; wise with the wisdom of books and 
 with the deeper wisdom of experience in human na- 
 ture ; reading the history of the past as an open 
 page, and learning from it the lessons so easy for a 
 nation to be taught by others' experience, — since all 
 nations are made up of the same human nature, — so 
 costly for a nation to be taught by its own mistakes; 
 reading the characters of men by that trained in- 
 stinct which cannot be deceived. He should be prac- 
 tised in the school of statesmanship, that highest and 
 most difficult of arts, which consists not in managing 
 men by their low and base motives, for mere party 
 success, but in shaping the policy, whether commer- 
 cial or moral, of a great nation, with far-seeing pcrcep- 
 
II 
 
 tion of the causes that lead to prosperity or to decay. 
 He should be kindled by the ardor of great convic 
 tions of truth and righteousness, ready to face unpop- 
 ularity for the faith that is in him, yet never hasty or 
 unjust; with a calm, deep comprehension of the views 
 most opposed to his own, able to do justice to their 
 convictions, and to find every ground of conciliation 
 and mutual respect. Strong with a commanding 
 personality, and with powers able to compel respectful 
 recognition, he should fulfil that Eastern proverb 
 which says,- " A man that knoweth the just value of 
 himself doth not perish," yet should have that re- 
 spect for others' judgment which most surely wins 
 their assent to the influence of a stronger nature, 
 and should be untinged by that self-reference which 
 centres the universe in itself Eloquent with a manly 
 strain, the power of his persuasion should never 
 be embittered by words of personality or scorn. To 
 borrow a figure from science, the spectrum of his 
 speech should be rich in the rays of light, rather than 
 in those of heat. He should be before his time in 
 vision, yet with his time in comprehending sympathy ; 
 with forward-looking sight, but backward-reaching 
 hand, to lift his people to his level. Must we say, 
 in the republic which Washington founded, in the 
 State which sent the incorruptible Pickering to his 
 
12 
 
 counsels in war and peace, and has inscribed the 
 names of John Adams and John Ouincy Adams 
 on the roll of his successors, that such a public ser- 
 vant must have an integrity above suspicion, with hands 
 clean from money-getting and from office-seeking, — 
 that he should have a lofty independence and a single 
 eye to the public good ? We live in a day when these 
 plain dictates of honor and conscience are distinctions 
 to Jdc named with praise. He should be crystal pure 
 from the vices of passion or of meanness, clad in an 
 asbestos robe of principle to walk through the fires of 
 the temptations which beset public life without so 
 much as the smell of sm.oke upon his garments. He 
 should sit at the feet of no human master, but he 
 should have sat at the feet of Christ. The eternal 
 principles of His Gospel of righteousness should glow 
 in his heart, and the wisdom of his law of kindness 
 should pervade his conduct with its fragrant breath, 
 while in the lowly faith of a disciple he should be " as 
 a little child." Of a public servant- so endowed, it 
 may well be said, in the words of the prophet, " I 
 will make a man more precious than fine gold : even 
 a man than the golden wedge of Ophir," 
 
 And now, if we look at the distinguished record of 
 that eminent servant of the nation whose finished life 
 is close to our tlioughts to-day, — not in the spirit of 
 
indiscriminate eulogy, but in the dispassionate at- 
 tempt to anticipate the judgment of another genera- 
 tion, with that frank independence of judgment which 
 he himself signally illustrated, we shall surely say. 
 Some of these great qualities Senator Sumner had 
 in abounding measure ; in others he was lacking. 
 Perhaps no man ever lived so all-sided as to have 
 them all : he who has the greater part of them must 
 stand high in the remembrance of a grateful country, 
 especially when the traits which distinguish him are 
 those which the land needs to brace its conscience and 
 renew the integrity of its will. 
 
 It has been the fortune of Mr. Sumner to be asso- 
 ciated more intimately than any other public man 
 with the most agitating questions of our time. And 
 this was no accident, but essential in the very nature 
 of the man. From the very beginning, his character 
 was a blending of two sides of character rarely united, 
 — strenuous self-culture, and earnest, if not defiant, 
 championship of the redress of wrongs. I do not 
 need here to retrace the familiar story in detail, or 
 to recapitulate what is in part so well known to 
 his fellow-townsmen, and is in large part written 
 on the history oif the country itself. Of the years 
 of study in our Boston schools, at the neighbor- 
 ing University (to which his noble bequest has tes- 
 
14 
 
 tified to his enduring filial affection), in his close 
 relation of pupil with master with Judge Story, of his 
 studious years at foreign universities and in London, 
 at a time when foreign study was comparatively rare, 
 he might truly have said, in the words of the English 
 poet whom he loved so well : — 
 
 When I was yet a child, no childish play 
 To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set 
 Serious to learn and know, and thence to do 
 What might be public good ; myself I thought 
 Born to that end, born to promote all truth, 
 All righteous things. * 
 
 He returned here with marked distinction at the 
 same age at which Milton again wrote to his friend 
 Diodati, " Do you ask what I am thinking of? So 
 may the good God help me, of immortality." Or it 
 might have been the w^ords of his own friend, De 
 Tocqueville, in which he might have said, " Life is 
 neither a pleasure nor a pain, but a serious business 
 which it is our duty to carry through and to terminate 
 with honor." Eleven intervening years were filled 
 with various labors, — professional, literary, and philan- 
 thropic, — which I do not need to enlarge on here. 
 
 o" 
 
 * These lines from " Milton's Paradise Regaimd''' Piook I, were placed by the 
 engraver uncler Jansen's portrait of Milton, at the age of lo. See for their 
 application to the poet's own life, Rev. J. J. G. Grahani's " Autobiography of 
 John Milton,'" p. II. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1S72. 
 
15 
 
 Meantime, the ominous cloud which rose above the hori- 
 zon with the annexation of Texas spread and darkened 
 more and more ; the war with Mexico followed ; then 
 came the dark days of 1850, when a call rang through 
 the land, parting friend from friend, brother from 
 brother. The student of history finds in those years 
 the seeds sown which were harvested in civil war, and 
 finds that Mr. Sumner was each year more prominent 
 as one of the voices of the ever-growing conviction 
 against slavery in New England. He was a little 
 more than forty years of age, — that stage of life when, 
 as he once said, " according to a foreign proverb, a man 
 has given to the world his full measure,"* — when he was 
 chosen to succeed Mr. Webster in the Senate of the 
 United States.! The Quaker poet of New England 
 tells me that at this time he confessed to him that he 
 had a great ambition, but not for political life, — that 
 his ambition was to become a jurist, or to write his- 
 tory. In that desire he would have satisfied the needs 
 of half of his nature, — the contemplative side ; but 
 the other half, the side of action, could never have 
 been content without a great field of action and of 
 power. And what a field it was on which the Senator 
 from Massachusetts entered in that stormy time ! As 
 
 * Works, vi ; 504 : Eulogy of Hon. Goldsmith F. Bailey. 
 
 t Mr. Webster's seat, vacated by his becoming Secretary of State, had been 
 filled for the remainder of his term by Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, during nine 
 numths, and Hon. Robert Rantoul, for a fortnight. 
 
i6 
 
 I have stood within the halls of the old senate cham- 
 ber, plain and bare, which shook with the thunders of 
 Webster's reply to Hayne, or within the palatial new 
 chamber, which saw the working out of the drama of 
 the civic side of the great war for the Union, and the 
 associations of the place have crowded upon me, and I 
 have remembered what echoes those walls would "ive 
 
 o 
 
 could they but speak what they had heard, it has 
 seemed to me that no place on earth was such a 
 sphere for worthy action or such a point of leverage 
 for the eloquence which would not end in words, but 
 shape the public will of a nation. Rufus Choate, who 
 knew it well, wrote to ^Ir. Sumner, " How does the 
 Senate strike you ? The best place this day on earth 
 tor reasoned and thoughtful yet stimulant public 
 speech."* " When I think what it requires," wrote Air. 
 Sumner himself, on his election, " I am obliged to say 
 that its honors are ail eclipsed by its duties."! To 
 such a sphere the Senator from jNIassachusetts came, — 
 one of the youngest of that august body, without 
 experience in public affairs, the bold and outspoken 
 representative of a small minority in Congress and of a 
 growing fire in the North. Ten days ago he was the 
 senior member of the body, trained by twenty-three 
 years of its great duties, — a longer sum of years than 
 
 * See Mr. Choate's letter, quoted in Mr. Sumner's Works, iii ; 2. 
 
 t Works, ii ; 438 : Acceptance of the office of Senator of the United States. 
 
'7 
 
 the office had been held by any Massachusetts senator 
 since the foundation of the rcpubUc, — and he had seen 
 the words, which when he spoke them were deemed 
 the enthusiasm of a fanatic, surpassed by the stupen- 
 dous reality of the history through which we have 
 lived. He might have applied in his own case the 
 words in which Mr. Mill, in his autobiography, speaks 
 of some matters in his own parliamentary career: 
 *' Mv advocacy of" them was "at the time looked 
 upon by many as personal whims of my own ; but the 
 great progress since made by those opinions,' and 
 especially the response made from almost all parts of 
 the kingdom to the demand, fuUv justified the timeliness 
 of those movements, and have made what was under- 
 taken as a moral and social duty a personal success." 
 The fiery heats of those years before the war the next 
 generation can never know ; for the battle which 
 they will have to fight has but one side, — the fight of 
 honesty against corruption : while the hardest part of 
 the struggle which preceded the downfall of slavery was 
 that men at the North, equally good, equally true, 
 were on opposite sides, and each could hardly avoid 
 misjudging the other. " The high contention" is now 
 *' hidden by the little handful of earth" ; but in its 
 record future generations will trace the manifest up- 
 heaval of the tremendous forces which were to shake 
 
i8 
 
 the nation to its foundations. It was the fateful blow 
 struck by a mad hand in answer to words spoken by 
 him in his place as senator which made Mr. Sumner 
 a symbol of the Northern idea. From that hour, the 
 silence of his suffering spoke with a louder tongue 
 than his most intense words. Then came the war, 
 when the strife of tongues gave way to the strife of 
 arms ; and for ten years, as Chairman of the Senate 
 Committee of Foreign Relations, he filled one of the 
 most important posts in the government so as to win 
 the respect alike of enemies and friends; and then 
 three years of loneliness as ' a voice crying in a desert, 
 Make the crooked straight and the rough places plain ' ; 
 and the scarred warrior, who had been in the forefront 
 of the battles of his time, passed from' storm into rest. 
 He had reached what he himself once called "the grand 
 climacteric, that Cape of Storms in the sea of human 
 existence." * 
 
 He was buried with the mighty mourning of a sov 
 erei^n State, as befitted the first Senator from Massa 
 chusetts (with one exception only) t who ever died in 
 office, — the senator who had held office for nearly a 
 generation of incorruptible life, the faithful voice of 
 
 * Works, i ; 148 : Notice of Judge Story. 
 
 t Hon. Isaac C. Bates of Northampton died at Washington, March iG, 1845, 
 .md was eulogized by Mr. Webster in the Senate. 
 
^9 
 
 liberty and justice. Such is the barest outline of the 
 external history of those tremendous years wlien "the 
 fountains of the great deep were broken up," and that 
 commanding presence was always where the storm was 
 wildest. 
 
 And now, when we ask for the secret of his power, 
 we find it, first, in that which was a weakness as well 
 as a strength, — namely, the strong imperiousness of 
 his convictions. He could not overstate them, they 
 were so pronounced and positive ; nor could he easily 
 deal justly with opponents. Political charity is the 
 rarest of the virtues, — rarer, by a strange law, in pro- 
 portion to the moral and philanthropic quality of the 
 opinions which one holds. The very fact that con- 
 science and the sense of right are so engaged makes it 
 wellnigh impossible to see how the conscience of hon- 
 orable and good men may be engaged in adverse views. 
 O hard fate, when the sense of justice to an oppressed 
 race contended with the sense of duty to a bond whose 
 rupture might cause the sun of the Union to go down 
 in blood, and good men among us, both hating the 
 giant wrong, both loving the starry constellation of the 
 States, were sundered by an impassable gulf! It was 
 in the nature of the man who swung what he called 
 "the crreat Northern hammer" to strike hard and stern 
 
 O 
 
 blows ;" and if in his record are found words which pass 
 
20 
 
 the mutual respect of high debate, or which follow the 
 method of prophetic denunciation rather than that of 
 statesmanlike conciliation, we cannot doubt that now, 
 out of the wisdom of death, he would speak to us to 
 say that if he could live his life over, he would do some 
 things differently. 
 
 But other men have had convictions as strong and 
 imperious as his without becoming identified with them 
 as the acknowledged exponent and representative of < 
 a principle. His strength was in the identity of his 
 principle with that of New England. He was " a Pu- 
 ritan idealist." In all its differences of form, there lived 
 in him that most persistent type, which has impressed 
 its character on the civilization of our whole country, 
 which was strong enough to subdue granite and ice 
 and make a home for their children. The Puritans 
 were impracticable men, — a projectile cast into Eng- 
 land, of such tremendous explosive force that when it 
 burst, the fragments flew across 3,000 miles of ocean. 
 They were men of a narrow conscience, and like some 
 strong stream, the deeper and the more resistless in its 
 flow because of the very narrowness Their indomit- 
 able spirit is cast into a word by " Andrew P""letcher, 
 whose heroical uprightness amid the trials of his time, 
 has become immortal in the saying, that he ' would read- 
 ily lose his life to serve his country, but would'not do a 
 
21 
 
 base thins: to save it.' " * The children of the Puritans 
 are still the same ; and we, who are of them, can afford 
 to acknowledge that the fathers would have been some- 
 times hard to live among, and that there is danger that 
 even conscience and zeal for righteousness may be at 
 times obstinate and one-sided. But one thing is cer- 
 tain, — that when these things are in the line of the 
 ideas of justice, freedom, abstract right, they have irre- 
 sistible power over the mind of the race which has 
 grown on our rocky soil. Men who are tempered 
 with this spirit are better fitted to point a thunderbolt 
 than to weld a nation ; they belong in the time when 
 controversy has passed beyond compromise. So far 
 from sympathizing with that rule of practical states- 
 manship which old Hesiod sings, — 
 
 " Half is more than the whole," 
 
 There can be for them nothing less than the ideal whole. 
 The only rule of yielding or giving up what they know 
 is in that saying of another Greek, — 
 
 " We must sacrifice to Truth alone." 
 
 It was the power of the Senator that he voiced this 
 intense Puritan strain in the ideas of the New England 
 conscience. Said one of his most ardent friends of 
 
 * Works, i ; 69. 
 
22 
 
 him, in the heat of a political campaign: * He is "pa- 
 tient in labor, untiring in effort, boundless in resources, 
 terribly in earnest, . . . the Stonewall Jackson of 
 the floor of the senate, . . . both ideologists, both 
 horsed on an idea." 
 
 Essentially characteristic of this moral intensity, 
 which makes the t3^pical New England character like 
 one of those Iceland geysers, a boiling hot spring in 
 the heart of the glacier, is an elevated confidence 
 in one's own intentions, tending in small natures to 
 self-absorption, but in great natures to utter absorp- 
 tion in a great cause, and giving an assurance of 
 rio^ht which could make the Senator choose for the 
 motto to his collected works, the proud appeal with 
 which he would speak to future generations, those 
 words of Leibnitz : " Veniet fortasse aliud tempus, 
 dignius nostro, quo debellatis odiis, Veritas triumpha- 
 bit. Hoc mecum opta, lector, et vale." One who 
 knew and loved him well sums up this characteristic 
 in these words in a letter to me : " He struck for the 
 right and was sure he saw it. He had a sublime con- 
 fidence in his own moral sagacity, greater than I have 
 ever seen in any man ; and, let me add, events usually 
 justified such confidence."! 
 
 * Mr. Wendell Phillips, quoted in IVorls, vii ; 243. 
 t Kcv. J. W. Tlionipson, d. d. 
 
23 
 
 And this zealous intensity in the man was served by 
 an indomitable power of work, such as has rarely been 
 equalled and probably never surpassed by any one in 
 the public service. I have the testimony of two of his 
 private secretaries to the fact that his strength and 
 fidelity in the unseen labors of his duty as senator, 
 and on the most responsible Committee of Foreign 
 Relations, exceeded anything that can be imagined. 
 He "toiled terribly." The key-note of his life is struck 
 in an early lecture of his on " The Employment of 
 Time," * whose text is the famous exclamation of Titus. 
 " I have lost a day ! " and he might well leave as his 
 legacy to those who would profit by his example the 
 words of Seneca : " Vita, si scias uti, longa est." 
 High office was to him no holiday perch, but an op- 
 portunity for more strenuous work, nor did anything 
 so chafe him as enforced abstention therefrom. All 
 the wide resources of a various learning were rein- 
 forced continually by special preparations, and he 
 carried the student's habit of toil into the position 
 where men are apt to think that they are officially in- 
 fallible on all questions, from finance and diplomacy to 
 the filling of the pettiest office. 
 
 And this is strikingly shown by that monument of 
 labor, yet uncompleted, — the edition of his Works. 
 
24 
 
 As during the recent clays I have read through tlie 
 seven volumes, I have been impressed with many 
 things, but with none more than this. From that oration 
 on " The True Grandeur of Nations," which sounded 
 again, in such rich and high-wrought .strain, the note 
 which Rufus Choate had struck the year before in the 
 United States Senate, when he said, " War is the 
 most ridiculous of blunders, the most tremendous of 
 crimes, the most comprehensive of evils," — an idea 
 emphasized in these words, which form the key-note 
 of Mr. Sumner's oration : * " War is known as the 
 Last Reason of Kings. Let it be no reason of our Re- 
 public ; " — to his last speech in the senate, there are 
 the same characteristics, — a labored affluence of illus- 
 tration from widest sources of study, a style elaborate 
 even to excess, but, throughout, the sense that here is 
 one who has made thorough preparation for the great 
 office of advising the Elders of the Republic. 
 
 And one can hardly read these volumes without 
 a deeper realization how truly the Senator was not 
 only a prominent figure, but a powerful actor in the 
 greatest chapter of modern histor}-. Friends will find 
 nothing save to admire; old enemies, much to differ 
 in ; and those who have been independent from per- 
 sonal tics or by-gone discords, both much to admire 
 
 * Works, i ; 130. 
 
 I 
 
^5 
 
 and somethinGf to rcGrret. But all must acfree in 
 reading the superscription of his name on page after 
 page of most eventful annals. If Abraham Lincoln 
 shall stand forth against the black background of the 
 war as the Cromwell of our great struggle, only far 
 purer, more unselfish than the Ironside Puritan was, 
 the name of the persistent friend of emancipation, who 
 stood to him in wellnigh as close a relation as did his 
 Latin Secretary to the Protector, will shine in the 
 same constellation. The future historian will per- 
 haps picture the two in scenes which are already re- 
 corded, — the Senator taking his French friend with him 
 to see the morning levee which that kindly heart, all 
 burdened with presidential cares, yet found time to 
 give daily to the poor who needed him most, — the sick 
 soldier or the poor widow, — with the invitation, "Come 
 with me and see St. Louis under the Oak of Vin- 
 cennes " ; or the President, a week before his martyr- 
 dom, reading aloud to the Senator, on the deck of the 
 steamboat that carried them to evacuated Richmond, 
 those prophetic lines in Macbeth : — 
 
 Duncan is in his grave : 
 After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. 
 Treason has done his worst : nor steel, nor poison, 
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 
 Can touch him farther ! 
 4 
 
26 
 
 But no future historian will be able to describe in 
 all its dramatic intensity the struggle which involved 
 these men, so different, and the parts of the nation 
 which they represented, — the one eager always for 
 the highest and furthest thing, the other gauging the 
 exact mind of the people with that pre-eminent politi- 
 cal sagacity. He will try to describe the one " crying 
 aloud and sparing not," as the voice of the most ad- 
 vanced conscience of the North, the other telling him 
 " You are only ahead of me a month or six weeks,*" — 
 till at last the proclamation seals the policy of the 
 government. He will describe the growth of the 
 institution of slavery on this continent, from the time 
 w-hen the Mayflower, with its cargo of liberty, and the 
 first slave ship, with its cargo of human bondage, were 
 crossing the ocean at the same time in 1620, to the 
 time when, like the genie of Arabian fable, the little 
 cloud, released from the hold of that vessel, darkened 
 all the land, a giant in strength. He will tell, too, 
 how the man who spoke the intensest sentiment of 
 the North \yas ever urging the principle of absolute 
 liberty, and would venture where it seemed wild to go, 
 as the Douo:las who bore the heart of Bruce to the 
 Holy Land threw his sacred trust far before him into 
 the hosts of the infidel, to witness that he would 
 
 * IVorl-s, vi ; 153. 
 
27 
 
 never give over his advance ; and then he will tell 
 how the great work was done by the hands of men 
 differing widely in their sentiment even on the great 
 question of universal liberty, but agreeing in being 
 willing to die for their country, — that not the voice 
 alone of eloquent oratory, but the deeds of devoted 
 patriotism wrought the marvel of freedom. Let yon 
 der marble speak,* with its proud record of men who 
 could be silent and give their lives ; to testify how the 
 great power of the land stood behind the Act of Eman- 
 cipation, and made it, instead of a bit of paper, a 
 reality! And then think of those long rows of col- 
 ored faces, the representatives of four grateful mil- 
 lions, that on Monday last gleamed with hardly sup- 
 pressed emotion, as of men parting with a mighty 
 friend ; and remember the coat of arms of Lord Ex- 
 mouth, on which " was emblazoned a figure never 
 before known in heraldry, — a Christian slave holding 
 aloft the cross, and dropping his broken fettersT^ Hap- 
 py, indeed, is he whose name is forever linked with 
 the eternal ideas of freedom and justice! 
 
 The lofty and permanent lesson which remains 
 with us from the life of Senator Sumner is one pecu- 
 
 * The monument " In memory of the young men of King's Chapel who died 
 for their country, 1S61-1865," erected in the church in 1867, records the. names o 
 fourteen who died, out of the nearly sixty sons of the church who engaged in the 
 war. 
 
 t Works, i ; 463 : White Slavery in the Barbary States. 
 
28 
 
 liarly needed in our time, — that of independent loyalty 
 to the best conscience. Whatever else fails, that can- 
 not fail. Not always does success come ; not always 
 do the wonderful forces of public awakening, the mad 
 ness of enemies, the awful arbitrament of war, justify 
 the political seer with the attainment of his vision. 
 " Prophets and kings have died without the sight.'* 
 But for fame, as well as for one's own inward peace, the 
 surest warrant is the boldest venture. Trust in the 
 eternal truths of conscience and duty and God ! The 
 sober wisdom of that homely precept of one of our 
 great poets, " Hitch your wagon to a star," will be 
 acknowledged in the end. 
 
 Who now remembers, in his dispraise, that John 
 Milton staked his all on a losing cause, that he was 
 an extremist and a fanatic, that he spoke hot and bitter 
 words against the enemies of his party ? But that 
 which shines in him is the pure and lofty spirit, the 
 consecration of great powers to his country's service 
 in a time of storm, — putting aside the plans of quiet 
 study and literary ease, — the great pleadings for 
 liberty and righteousness, the soul that " was like a 
 star and dwelt apart." 
 
 We learn, by contrast with those things which in the 
 presence of great death compel our reverence, what 
 
29 
 
 are the dansfers of the land. What kind of man is he 
 whose public service will prove the public servitude, 
 and will drag a nation towards its fall ? We have 
 already described him by opposites. He will be one 
 educated enough to know the evil side of men, able 
 enough to compel their reluctant help, wise in the 
 secrets of corruption, who has grown rich from the 
 misfortunes of his country, who mounts to power over 
 heaps of blackened reputations, and uses every office 
 but as a round in the ladder of his ambition ; who 
 rules by fear, yet whose friendship is even more blast- 
 ins: than his hatred. Detected as^ain and ao^ain in 
 wiles which would wreck the good name of better men, 
 he will almost persuade the multitude to believe his 
 shame to be a new form of virtue. If ever such a man 
 should come, woe to the nation which he tricks towards 
 its doom ! for then, indeed, " Politics become a game, 
 and principles are the counters which are used."* 
 
 But such men would have little power of evil in a 
 country, if there did not exist grave elements of dan- 
 ger in the atmosphere of the time, in those murky dis- 
 positions of the public mind to which they act as the 
 lightning-rod on a lowering thunder-cloud, to draw the 
 fatal shock. First among these, we must name the 
 worship of money for money's own sake. So long as 
 
 * Works, ii; 154 : Letters on Parties, etc. 
 
30 
 
 men and women believe that this has any worth in 
 itself, apart from the question hoiu it has been won, and 
 will let foul gains win a fair name, teaching their chil- 
 dren by precept to seek above all things to be honest, 
 and by practice to seek above all things to be rich ; 
 so long as they fear the wholesome frugality of our in- 
 corrupt ancestors more than they fear dishonor, and 
 add a double bribe to the temptation to get wealth 
 in doubtful ways, by respecting it after it is so got; 
 when the prizes of political preferment are gilded with 
 unclean perquisites, and leaders high in place sway the 
 nation through the purse-strings of their base tools and 
 batten on the spoils of industry ; so long as a consid- 
 erable part of mankind look leniently on Judas, be- 
 cause he carried the bag, we may well be thankful for 
 one example for lofty integrity, so pure and high that 
 he could say, " People talk about the corruption of 
 Washington : I have lived here all these years and 
 have seen nothins: of it," — so true that no slander dared 
 sully his reputation with the suspicion of a bribe. 
 
 And then there is the worship of power for power's 
 own sake. Forgetting that ability, apart from moral 
 gifts, is the sharpest cutting-tool, sure to turn in the 
 hand that uses it unless it is grasped by firm princi- 
 ple, our people are tempted to idolize the very qualities 
 by which the angels fell, and in which the chief of 
 
31 
 
 fallen angels is also chief. They count Impudence and 
 brazen audacity a sign of power; but do they think 
 what power mere unscrupulousness may give a man ? 
 The moment he flings honor and decency to the winds, 
 his power for evil in word and deed Is multiplied ten- 
 fold. What then ? Shall we straightway make the 
 lack of scruple one of the cardinal virtues, and teach 
 our children to take the ''Not'' out of the ten com- 
 mandments ? Or shall we turn again to the reassur- 
 Inc: thought of a man of state who could hold hlo^h 
 office for nearly a generation ; whose motto was those 
 words of Story, " No man ever stands in the way of 
 another"; * whom, having held such office, none accuse 
 of turning It into an engine for private advantage ; 
 who sought sincerely to make the ends he aimed at in 
 It his " country's, God's, and truth's"; who believed 
 himself the servant, not the master, of the Common 
 wealth, whose honors sought him, and were un 
 marketed as they were unbought.? 
 
 And yet again we are in danger of disbelief In the 
 honor of the honorable. In the hot and heavy fumes 
 of accusation and of proven failure to do clear duty 
 which befog the air, when great names are tarnished 
 and honors well earned are cheaply lost, the tempter 
 whispers that it Is so the world over, — " There is none 
 
 * Works, i ; 147 : Tribute to the late Judge Story. 
 
32 
 
 upright ; no, not one." Who shall measure the inspi- 
 ration which there is in such an hour in the unspotted 
 example of a great integrity towering above the mean 
 rivalries and small ambitions of petty greatness as a 
 rocky New England summit towers over the surround- 
 ing plain ? 
 
 And if we are tempted to be discouraged, seeing 
 a wide distrust of educated skill ; that the community 
 is prone to think that statecraft comes by nature 
 or in flattering the mob ; that it is often slow to 
 seek the service of the best-trained gifts, and hasty to 
 condemn the long-tried and upright public servant; — 
 there is at least the alleviation of seeing it wake to a 
 sense of its loss when one of its best-furnished and 
 most faithful goes out of the contumely and fickleness 
 of these earthly noises to where the silence is broken 
 only by God's " Well done ! " 
 
 There is, I know, a theory which writes a new 
 moral law of party obligations, and makes infraction 
 of those behests one of the deadly sins. Accordin 
 to this view, it is enough that men claim to represen 
 the moral sentiment of the country, to enable them 
 to communicate a sort of 2:race to anv sinner whom 
 they may sanctify by a nomination for office. The 
 Church of Rome is sometimes accused of holding that 
 a priest, though a bad man, can equally administer the 
 
sacraments ; and there are those who hold that if duly 
 named for the place, the most corrupt man is fitted 
 to become a, high-priest in the nation's temple ; 
 there are those who hold that we elect men to keep 
 the national conscience and are absolved from any 
 public duty but doing as we are told. When we thus 
 sell ourselves for nothing to the will of power, fare- 
 well indeed to the hope of our high heritage from 
 God ! If it were so, the free spirit might well say 
 with Lacordaire, " I am forced to leave the scene by 
 a secret instinct of my liberty, in presence of an age 
 w^hich had no longer all its own. I saw that in my 
 ideas, in my language, and in my past, I also was a 
 liberty, and that my time was come for disappearing 
 like the rest." 
 
 But it is not so. Christian men and women, who 
 have to do with forming the better mind of the 
 republic, see to it that you do your part to scatter 
 these miasmatic vapors which threaten to stifle 
 our best life, — and all will yet be well. Hold up 
 afresh a higher standard of duty before others ; hold 
 to it those whom you place in power, — and test their 
 claims by it ; and that you may do so consistently, 
 hold yourself to it. Enforce the Christian law of 
 conscience, as personal in public as in private duty. 
 5 
 
34 
 
 Honor, as the great outburst of popular respect has 
 honored, the man who tries to do his duty. 
 
 Ah, to wliat wholesome lessons does tlie event bring 
 us back, whose shadow is still over us! I end as I began : 
 death teaches us much that life could never teach; 
 — the great and solemn lesson of charity, that 
 searching spirit of love which will find the truth in a 
 man and hold it fast, and help it in all its strong and 
 radiant power ; the faith in the ultimate victory of 
 the truth, which will count all else loss if we 'can 
 only lose ourselves in that triumphant, much-endur- 
 ing service ; the trust in character, in that rocky 
 faithfulness to one's best and deepest convictions, 
 
 which 
 
 " Obeys the voice at eve 
 Obeyed at prime." 
 
 And this is the meaning of that wonderful out- 
 pouring of the great heart of a Commonwealth which 
 we ourselves have seen. 
 
 " And they buried him in the city of David among 
 the kings, because he had done good in Israel, both 
 toward God and toward his house;" " and all Israel 
 mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord." 
 
 Note A. Page 6. — The father of the Senator, Charles Pinckncy Sumner, 
 Iligli Sheriff of Suffolk County, a man of stern integrity, died in April, 1839, at 
 the same age which his distinguished son attained, — si xty-three vears. 
 
 His mother, Mrs. Relief (Jacobs) Sumner, died in June, 1S66, aged eighty- 
 
•35 
 
 one years, three months, having outlived seven of her nine children, all of whom 
 were taken away in the fulness of their promise. Mrs. Sumner was a woman of 
 retiring simplicity of life, but of strong and heroic traits of character ; and those 
 who knew her could trace in the Senator's noblest characteristics a direct inher- 
 itance from her. The lofty and resolute sense of duty by which she was gov- 
 erned was strikingly illustrated by the following incident, which occurred while 
 she was on her death-bed. A few days before she died, as a friend bent over her 
 to receive what she supposed to be her dying message to her son, then at Wash- 
 ington, during the session of Congress, she caught these words from the failing 
 lips : " Tell him his country needs him more than his mother does now." lie 
 returned, however, instantly, onreceiving tidings oE her fatal illness, and had the 
 satisfaction of being with her when she died. 
 
 i\lrs. Sumner's losses in her children were as follows : Matilda (twin sister 
 with Charles), died in March, 1832, aged 21 years ; Jane, died in October, 1837, 
 aged 17 years ; Mary, died in October, 1844, aged 22 years ; Horace, drowned in 
 the*vreck of the ship "Elizabeth" on Long Island, July 16, 1850, on his return 
 from abroad ; Albert, lost with his family, in the wreck of the " Lyonnais," Nov. 
 1856; Henry, died at Orange, New Jersey, in 1856; George, died October 6, 
 1S63, aged 46 years. Charles Sumner, Senator from ^Massachusetts, was born 
 Jan. 6, iSii, and died March 11, 1874- One sister, Mrs. Julia Hastings, of San 
 Francisco, survives him. 
 
 Note B. Page 6. — Probably one of the strongest influences which affected 
 Mr. Sumner's early life was that which proceeded from Dr. Channing's "enthusi- 
 asm for Humanity." In the latest revision of his IForks, for the edition not yet 
 completed, he has put on record his Christian sentiments in the following, 
 among many other similar expressions : — 
 
 "The true image of Christ is not lost. Clearer than in the venerated napkin, 
 better than in color or marble of choicest art, it appears in each virtuous deed, in 
 every act of self-sacrifice, in all magnanimous toil, in any recognition of human 
 brotherhood." — W^«7r,^x, ii ; 277 : "War System of the Commonwealth of Na- 
 tions." 
 
 " Long before philosophy deduced the law of human progress from the history 
 of man, the gospel silently planted it in the human hed.rt.'" — PVbr^s, ii ; 99 : " The 
 Law of Human Progress." 
 
 " If any man thinks that the interest of these nations and the interest of Chris- 
 tianity are two separate and distinct things, I wish my soul may never enter into 
 his secret." — frc;/-/5'j-, iii; 87 : Motto, from Oliver Cromwell, to "Freedom Na- 
 tional, Slavery Sectional." 
 
 And his faith in a principle characteristic of the Christian gospel is witnessed 
 by his consistent interest in the cause of peace, — as testified alike by his earliest 
 oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations," and by his bequest of one thou- 
 sand dollars to the president and fellows of Harvard College, for an annual 
 prize dissertation "on Universal Peace, and the Methods by which War may be 
 Permanently Suspended." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The Funeral Services at King's Chapel and at Mount 
 Auburn on Monday, March i6, 1874. 
 
 When it was known that the State authorities had undertaken to 
 give a public funeral to the remains of Senator Sumner, the War- 
 dens and Vestry of King's Chapel had at once formally placed the 
 church at their disposal. 
 
 The following account of Monday's Services is mainly condensed 
 from the Boston papers of March 17 : — 
 
 The members of the City Government assembled at the City Hall 
 soon after two o'clock, and at half-past two moved in procession to 
 King's Chapel. 
 
 At fifteen minutes before three o'clock the procession from the 
 State House entered the church, which had been draped in mourn- 
 ing, and had the chancel adorned with flowers and its rail draped 
 with American flags. His Excellency the Governor and Staff, the 
 members of the Executive Council, Heads of Departments and Sen- 
 ate, members of the Society of Cincinnati * and Board of Trade, were 
 assigned to seats on the left of the broad aisle. The pews in the 
 left side aisle were occupied by the members of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives. The pews at the head on the right of the broad aisle 
 were allotted to mourners, the Vice President of the United States, 
 the Massachusetts delegation in Congress, the Congressional Com- 
 mittee, and the Chaplain and Sergeant-at-Arms of the U. S. Senate. 
 In the rear of them were seated the Judges of the Supreme Court, 
 Judges of the United States Courts, and officers of the Army and 
 Navy, Corporation and Overseers of Harvard College, Members of 
 the Class of 1830, the Reverend Clergy, Massachusetts Historical 
 Society, and Chamber of Commerce. The pall-bearers were seated 
 at the head of the right side aisle, and below them the members of 
 
 * III pew No. 74, furmerly occupied by Mr. Sumner's family. 
 
38 
 
 the City Government. Th-e Trustees of the Pubhc Library and 
 Art Museum and the Cambridge City Government closed the pro- 
 cession. 
 
 The Burial Service 
 
 Was according to the King's Chapel Liturgy, with special additions. 
 Rev. Henry W. Foote officiated, and the music was selected and con- 
 ducted by Mr. J. \\'. Tufts, the organist and director of the choir' 
 which was composed for the occasion of twelve voices, — Mrs. Kim- 
 ball, Mrs. Howard, and Mrs, West, sopranos ; Mrs. Shattuck, Mrs. 
 Sawyer, and Mrs. Barry, altos; Messrs. Collins, Fessenden, and 
 Clark, tenors ; and Messrs. Spencer, Hathorn, and Dr. Goddard, 
 bassos. 
 
 The coffin was met at the church door by Rev. Mr. Foote, who 
 uttered the Sentences : — 
 
 I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord ; he who 
 believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live ; and whoso- 
 ever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. 
 
 I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the 
 latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms 
 destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. 
 
 We brought nodiing into tliis world and it is certain that we can 
 carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken 
 away ; blessed be the name of the Lord. 
 
 An organ prelude followed (Stradella's Largo, " O Salutaris " ), 
 and then Neumarck's Choral : — 
 
 " To thee, O Lord, I yield my spirit, 
 
 Who break's! in love this mortal chain. 
 My life I but from thee inherit, 
 
 And death becomes my chiefest gain. 
 In thee I live, in thee I die 
 Content, for thou art ever nigh." 
 
 Then followed the Burial Psalms, the choir singing the responses 
 in Blow's setting : — 
 
 Lord, let me know my end and the number of my days ; that I 
 may know how frail I am. 
 
Behold, thou hast ma'de my days as it were a span long, and mine 
 age is even as nothing in respect to thee ; and verily every man 
 living is altogether vanity. 
 
 For man walkcth in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain ; 
 he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them. 
 
 And now. Lord, what is my hope ? 'lYuly my hope is even in 
 thee. 
 
 I became dumb and opened not my mouth ; for it was thy doing. 
 
 But take thy plague away from me ; for I am consumed by the 
 blow of thy heavy hand. 
 
 When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest 
 his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a gar- 
 ment ; surely every man is vanit}^ 
 
 Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling ; 
 hold not thy peace at my tears. 
 
 For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers 
 were. 
 
 Oh spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go 
 hence, and be no more seen. 
 
 Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another. 
 
 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst 
 formed the earth and the world even from everlasting to everlasting, 
 thou art God. 
 
 Thou turnest man to destruction ; and sayest, Return, ye children 
 of men. 
 
 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday, when it 
 is past, or a watch in the night. 
 
 i'hou carrieit them away as with a flood ; they are even as a 
 sleep ; and fade away suddenly like the grass. 
 
 In the morning it is green, and groweth up ; but in the evening it 
 is cut down, dried up, and withered. 
 
 The days of our age are threescore years and ten • and though 
 men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their 
 strength then but labour and sorrow ; so soon passeth it away, and 
 we are gone. 
 
 So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts 
 unto wisdom. Amen. 
 
40 
 
 Then followed these Selections from Scripture : — 
 
 The burden of the valley of vision. What aileth thee now, that 
 thou art wholly gone up to the housetops? Thou that art full of 
 stirs, a tumultuous city. 
 
 Help, Lord ! for the faithful fail from among the children of men. 
 
 All ye that are about him, bemoan him; all ye that know his 
 name, say, how is the strong staff broken, and the beautiful rod ! 
 
 To the counsellors of peace is joy. But His word was in mine 
 heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with 
 forbearing, and I would not stay. For I heard the defaming of 
 many, fear on every side. Report, say they, and we will report it. 
 All my fimiliars watch for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will 
 be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our 
 revenge on him. . . . But, O Lord of hosts, that triest the 
 righteous, . . . unto thee have I opened my cause. 
 
 Righteousness exalteth a nation ; but sin is a reproach to any 
 people. 
 
 Speak unto the children of Israel . . . and proclaim liberty 
 throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof Is not this 
 the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands of wickedness, to 
 undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free, and that 
 ye break every yoke .'' As free, and not using your liberty for a 
 cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. 
 
 The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light ; they 
 that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the 
 light shined. 
 
 When I went out to the gate through the city the young men saw 
 me, and hid themselves, and the aged arose and stood up. The 
 princes refrained talking, and laid their hands on their mouth. 
 Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and 
 him that had none to help him, the blessing of him that was ready 
 to perish came upon me. I put on righteousness and it clothed me. 
 I was a father to the poor; and the cause which I knew not I 
 searched out My glory was fresh in me ; and my bow was re- 
 newed in my hand. Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and 
 kept silence at my counsel. 
 
 Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in mine integrity. I have 
 
 1 1 
 
 li 
 
41 
 
 not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers. I 
 have hated the congregation of evil doers ; and will not sit with the 
 wicked. I will wash mine hands in innocency. Gather not my 
 soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men: in whose hands 
 is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes. But as for me, I 
 will walk in mine integrity ; redeem me and be merciful unto me. 
 
 Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in 
 his holy place ? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart ; who 
 hatli not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully. He 
 shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the 
 God of his salvation. 
 
 And now, behold, I am gray-headed . . . and I have walked 
 before you from my childhood unto this day. Behold, here I am : 
 witness against me before the Lord, and before his anointed : whose 
 ox have I taken ? or whose ass have I taken ? or whom have I de- 
 frauded ? or whom have I oppressed ? or of whose hand have I 
 received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith .'' 
 
 But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there 
 shall no torment touch them. There the wicked cease from troub- 
 ling and the w^eary are at rest. 
 
 For the memorial of virtue is immortal ; because it is known with 
 God and with men. When it is present men take example at it, and 
 when it is gone they desire it; it weareth a crown and triumpheth 
 forever, having gotten the victory, striving for undefiled rewards. 
 
 Their bodies are buried in peace ; but their name liveth forever- 
 more. 
 
 He judged the cause of the poor and needy ; then it was well with 
 him : Was not this to know me ? saith the Lord. 
 
 What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation ? That 
 the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust 
 in it. 
 
 He that had received five talents came and brought other five 
 talents, saying. Lord, thou deliverest unto me five talents ; behold, 
 I have gained beside them five talents more. His lord said unto 
 him. Well done, thou good and faithful servant : thou hast been 
 faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : 
 enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 
 6 . 
 
42 
 
 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
 are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; 
 if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
 thin£:s. 
 
 Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of 
 those who slept. P'or since by man came death, by man came also 
 the resurrection of the dead. 
 
 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. 
 
 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and 
 another glory of the stars ; for one star differeth from another star 
 in glor}\ So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in cor- 
 ruption, it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in dishonor, it is 
 raised in glory ; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power ; it is 
 sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. 
 
 Now, this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit 
 the kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 
 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must 
 put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on in- 
 corruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortalit)% then shall 
 be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up 
 in victory. O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy vic- 
 tory ? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law ; 
 but thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 The following anthem from Mendelssohn's St. Paul was then 
 sung : — 
 
 Happy and blessed are they who have ciuluicd ! For though the body dies, the 
 soul shall live forever. 
 
 At the close of the anthem, the Burial Service proceeded: — 
 Man who is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is 
 full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower ; he 
 fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. 
 
 In the midst of life we are in death ; of whom may we seek for 
 succour, but of thee, () Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased ? 
 
mm 
 
 43 
 
 Yet, O Lord God most hoh', O Lord most mighty, O holy and 
 most merciful Father, deliver us not unto the bitter pains of eternal 
 death ! 
 
 Thou knowest. Lord, the secrets of our hearts ; shut not thy mer- 
 ciful ears to our pra3^ers ; but spare us. Lord most holy, O God most 
 mighty, O holy and merciful Father, thou most worthy Judge Eter- 
 nal, suffer us not at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from 
 thee. 
 
 Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself 
 the soul of our brother, here departed, we therefore commit his 
 body to the ground ; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; 
 in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, when the earth and the sea shall give up 
 their dead, and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in Jesus 
 shall be changed and made like unt6 his glorious body, according to 
 the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue ^11 things to him- 
 self. 
 
 Then the following Choral by Gastorius (arranged by Mr. Tufts), 
 was sung : — 
 
 " Leave God to order all thy ways, 
 
 And hope in him, whate'er betide ; 
 
 Thou 'It find him in the evil days 
 
 Thy all-sufficient strength and guide. 
 Who trusts in God's unchanging love 
 Builds on the rock that nought can move. 
 
 " He knows when joyful hours are best, 
 
 He sends them as he sees it meet ; 
 
 When thou hast borne the fiery test, 
 
 And art made free from all deceit. 
 He comes to thee all unaware, 
 And makes thee own his loving care. 
 
 " Sing, pray, and swerve not from his ways, 
 
 But do thine own part faithfully, 
 
 Trust his rich promises of grace, 
 
 So shall they be fulfilled in thee ; 
 God never yet forsook at need 
 The soul that trusted him indeed." 
 
44 
 
 Then followed the Collect and the special Prayer : — 
 Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those who depart 
 hence in the Lord ; and with whom the souls of the faithful, after 
 they are delivered from the burthen of the flesh, are in joy and 
 felicity, we give thee hearty thanks for the good examples of all 
 those thy servants who, having finished their course in faith, do now 
 rest fiom their labours. And we beseech thee that we, with all those 
 who are departed in the true faith of thy holy name, may have our 
 perfect consummation and bliss in thy heavenly and everlasting 
 glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 O Almighty and ever-living God, we fly to thee as our eternal ref- 
 uge ; we rest ourselves upon thee, the Rock of Ages. Blessed be thy 
 holy name for the assurance of eternal life which thou hast given us 
 by thy beloved Son; blessed be thy holy name for the faith which we 
 cherish that thjs corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal, immortality. 
 
 Let this immortal hope and the comforts of thy gracious Spirit 
 sustain in this their bereavement the kindred and friends of our 
 departed brother, those who are near and those who are far away. 
 May the sorrow of the land bear up their hearts with precious con- 
 solations, and the land's sorrow be full of consecration for this great 
 people. 
 
 Bless our beloved country, and make its rulers to rule over us for 
 good. Teach its senators wisdom, and give to all its people a spirit 
 of purer patriotism, inspired by thy faith and fear. May we trust 
 not in any arm of flesh, but in the living God. Raise up wise and 
 faithful men to guide us in the place of thy servant whom thou hast 
 called to thy nearer service from the single-hearted and loyal dis- 
 charge of his great office ; and, O God, teach us in our great loss the 
 full lessons of his eminent and faithful life, that our gratitude may 
 be attested by our dedication of ourselves to thy truth and thy law. 
 
 In this community, whose son he was, we thank thee for every 
 great gift in him, of example in constancy and courage for the 
 right, and scorn of all that was mean and low, and incorruptible 
 integrity, — for his pleading the cause of the down-trodden and his 
 hearing the sighing of the sorrowful, his zeal for justice and truth, 
 for every wise word and brave and honest deed. And chiefly do 
 
45 
 
 we thank thee for the lofty purpose which inspired his service of his 
 country, to give to her the best he had to give. Sanctify these great 
 memories to us, and make them fruitful in high thinking, and faithful 
 living to the people of this land. 
 
 Visit this mourning Commonwealth, whose heart is melted in a 
 common sorrow, with thy Spirit of grace, to renew in us the best 
 example of loyalty to truth and duty and thee. Purge us from all 
 selfseeking counsels. Teach us to honor only that which is worthy 
 of honor, and to trust only them wiio put their trust in thee. 
 
 Be thou, O God, our refuge nnd our consolation and our sure 
 trust. The more we are brought to perceive that things seen are 
 temporal, so much the more may we find that the things which are 
 unseen are eternal ; that thou art faithful, and that Christ is worthy, 
 and that heaven and not earth is our home. May we embrace thy 
 promises and be thankful ; may we know that thou art God, and be 
 still. And grant, we beseech thee, O Holy Father and Eternal 
 Judge, that we may all live mindful of our duty and our trust, and 
 waiting on thy will ; that, when we have served thee in our genera- 
 tions, we may be gathered unto our fathers, having the testimony of 
 a good conscience, and in the hope that neither death nor life, nor 
 things present, nor things to come, will be able to separate us from 
 the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. 
 
 The following hymn by Montgomery was then sung by the congre- 
 gation to the tune of Olmutz : — 
 
 " Servant of God, well done ! 
 
 Rest from thy loved employ ; 
 The battle fought, the victory won, 
 Enter thy Master's joy. 
 
 " The voice at midnight came, 
 He started up to hear ; 
 A mortal arrow pierced his frame, — 
 He fell, but felt no fear. 
 
 " Tranquil amidst alarms, 
 It found him on the field, 
 A veteran, slumbering on his arms, 
 
 Beneath his red-cross shield. " 
 
 " The pains of death are past ; 
 Labor and sorrow cease ; 
 And, life's long warfare closed at last, 
 His soul is found in peace." 
 
46 
 
 The Benediction followed 
 
 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the 
 fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen. 
 
 And the service was concluded with Mendelssohn's "Funeral 
 March*' and Pergolesi's " Stabat Mater." 
 
 All the way from King's Chapel to Mount Auburn the streets 
 were lined with expectant, but hushed and reverent crowds- About 
 a thousand colored men from all over New England awaited the 
 funeral train in front of the State House, and attended it to Cam- 
 bridge Bridge, where it was also left by the military band which had 
 accompanied it, playing dirges. 
 
 It was nearly six o'clock when the long, imposing procession 
 passed under the massive gateway in its winding march to the grave. 
 It passed up Central and Walnut Avenues to Arethusa Path, where 
 the coffin was borne, preceded by the officiating clergyman. Rev. 
 H. W. Foote, and by the bearers, to the side of the grave. It was 
 covered, as it had been in the church, by the most beautiful of 
 flowers, which were buried with it. Immediately behind the 
 bier -came the various dignitaries who had assembled to do what 
 honor they could to the njemory of Charles Sumner, and took 
 up their positions about the grave, his nearest friends and 
 the Massachusetts delegation in Congress standing at the 
 foot of the grave and a little at its left, with the committee of the 
 Legislature by their side at its right. At the head and just behind 
 the clergyman stood the few surviving members of the class of 1S30 
 in Harvard, Mr. Sumner's classmates ; while on the rising slope 
 above and north of the grave stood the Congressional committee, the 
 members of the Legislature, and the other invited spectators. Be- 
 hind, clustering on every hillock, pressing against the ropes on all 
 sides, and climbing to the very summit of the hill where the tow^er 
 stands, was the vast crowd of spectators, numbering many thou- 
 sands, who waited in silence the last rites of sepulture. 
 
 As the body was deposited at the side of the grave a chorus of 
 over forty male voices, selected from the Apollo Club accompanied 
 bv trombones, and led by Mr. B. J. Lang, sang the ode of 
 
47 
 
 Horace, "Integer vitae, scelerisque purus."* While the solemn 
 music was rising, two daughters of Dr. Howe, the only persons 
 of their sex within the enclosure, stepped forward in behalf 
 of Mr. Sumner's absent sister, and placed upon the coffin, 
 already loaded with those floral designs of rarest beauty which 
 adorned it while the body lay in state, one a cross and the other 
 a wreath, which rivalled in beauty that upon which it rested. It 
 was a tender tribute that moved many to tears. Hardly had the 
 sounds of the singers' voices died away upon the air, when the min- 
 ister, speaking so that he could be heard by all around, said : — 
 
 I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me. Write, from hence- 
 forth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ; even so saith the 
 Spirit ; for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow 
 them. 
 
 The Lord's Prayer was afterwards said by minister and mourn- 
 ers, and while the remains were slowly lowered into their final rest- 
 ing-place, the choir sang Dr. Hedge's version (arranged by Mr. 
 Lang) of Luther's Choral : — 
 
 " EIN FESTE BURG 1ST UNSER GOTT. 
 
 " A mighty fortress is our God, 
 
 A bulwark never failing ; 
 Our helper he amid the flood 
 
 Of mortal ills prevailing ; J 
 
 For still our ancient foe 
 Doth seek to work us woe, 
 His craft and power are great, 
 And, armed with cruel hate, 
 
 On earth is not his equal. 
 
 " Did we in our strength confide, 
 
 Our striving would be losing, — 
 Were not the right man on our side, 
 
 The man of God's own choosing. 
 Dost ask who that may be ? 
 Christ Jesus, it is he, 
 Lord Sabbaoth his name, 
 From age to age the same, 
 
 And he must win the battle. 
 
 *The Apollo Club freely accorded its aid in these services, in sympathy with 
 the general feeling of the community. 
 
48 
 
 " The word above all earthly powers, — 
 
 No thanks to them, — abideth, 
 The spirit and the gifts are ours 
 
 Through Him who with us sidcth. 
 Let goods and kindred go, 
 This mortal life also ; 
 The body they may kill, — 
 God's truth abideth still. 
 
 His kingdom is forever." 
 
 As the beautiful service went on, the chorus chanting in solemn 
 monotones the responsive " Amens," the scene was one of the most 
 impressive which it ever falls to the lot of man to witness. The 
 sky had taken on a subdued gray tinge, through which the light of 
 the setting sun shone but faintly over the city of the dead. The 
 air was silent as if the vast assembly were but breathless marble 
 statues, and in the pauses of the service, from Boston, which lay 
 plainly in sight towards the sea, and Cambridge and Brookline and 
 all the neighboring cities an'd towns, rang slowly and faintly the 
 vibrations of the tolling bells. 
 
 After a few moments of silence the benediction was pronounced. 
 Then hundreds rushed forward to obtain a spray from the pile of 
 evergreen boughs that covered the mound of earth taken from the 
 grave. It was rapidly growing dark, and the vast crowd turned 
 homeward, leaving the ashes to abide henceforth in peace. The 
 spot where the body lies is in the Lot No. 2447, Arethusa Path, 
 in the rear part of the cemetery. 
 
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