1886—England Revisited—Speaking in the City Temple—Westminster Abbey—Lecturing through Great Britain—Addressing the Theological Students at City Temple—“Life of Christ”—Sickness—Rest.

For several years before his death earnest efforts were made to induce Mr. Beecher to revisit England. His manly fight against such odds, in 1863, had quite captured the heart of the English people, who always have a tender feeling for a good fighter.

What began as admiration steadily grew and deepened into affection. His sermons, his writings, and even the meagre reports of lectures and speeches, were eagerly read—quite as much so in England as in America.

And when the great cloud of scandal loomed up in 1873-6, none were any more steadfast and loyal in love and confidence than the friends in old England. Among the many testimonials treasured by his family are the resolutions of sympathy and confidence received from clerical associations in England, Scotland, Wales, and even from the distant provinces.

With each succeeding year the importunities that he should spend a summer in England increased, until, in the early spring of 1886, he finally decided to brave the discomforts of an ocean voyage—to him no slight trial—and visit again his English friends. This being a trip of peace and not of war, he determined to take Mrs. Beecher with him. His decision was made the latter part of May. The next Sunday he made the announcement from the pulpit. On the following Sunday he preached his farewell. The church was packed, if possible, fuller than usual, the throng crowding around the pulpit-steps at the close of the service to say farewell.

He engaged passage on the Etruria for Saturday, June 19. The Friday night preceding the regular prayer-meeting night became a regular leave-taking. The services were over by nine o’clock, and from that hour until eleven Mr. and Mrs. Beecher were the centre of a circle of friends that filled the lecture-room and overflowed into the church auditorium, anxious to shake hands and say God-speed.

The Etruria was to start early Saturday morning, so Mr. and Mrs. Beecher went aboard Friday night.

Promptly at six o’clock the hawsers were cast off, and the great steamer slowly drew out from the pier, and, gathering headway, turned her prow eastward and slowly steamed down the bay. Almost simultaneously the excursion steamer Grand Republic, with three thousand friends—whose enthusiastic affection had called them, before the sun was up, to pay their farewell tribute—left her wharf in Brooklyn to intercept the Etruria in the Upper Bay. Just off Liberty Island the Etruria slowed down and the Grand Republic came alongside; her passengers, crowding to the nearer guards, gave vent to their feelings in ringing cheers. Mr. and Mrs. Beecher, standing on the upper deck, responded with hat and handkerchief. The band aboard the Grand Republic played “Hail to the Chief,” the whistles of the steamers saluted, and as the Etruria, getting under way again, forged rapidly ahead, the choir of Plymouth Church sang the Doxology, the sweetly solemn notes growing fainter as the steamers drew apart.

Going below, they found their staterooms literally embanked in flowers. One enthusiastic friend had left twenty homing pigeons, with instructions to release them at stated intervals during the day. To these short notes were attached, and borne back by the swift, home-seeking wings, being the last words to many friends until the cable announced Mr. Beecher’s safe arrival at Queenstown on the 26th.

Our space forbids an attempt to give more than a very general account of this visit; a full account of the entire trip has already been published, with verbatim reports of the sermons and lectures delivered by Mr. Beecher in England.^[18]

It would be impossible in cold words to express the deep and tender feelings with which Mr. Beecher put his foot again on English soil after an absence of nearly a quarter of a century. Memory, swift-flying, ran back through the twenty-three years past, and like some grand panorama the impressive events, both national and personal, moved by his mind’s eyes in silent procession.

Slavery, that blight upon America’s fair name, had been blotted out, and the places that had known it, knew it no more for ever. The struggle for national existence, which had been hanging almost on even balance when, twenty-three years before, he had raised his voice in this same land, and pleaded the nation’s cause, had ended in complete victory and triumphant vindication of those principles for which he had contended. It was with no little pride that he was able to stand again before an English audience and say “that every single substantial sentiment that was set forth in those several popular addresses had now become history.”

Within that same period he had himself passed through the flood of a personal persecution which, for persistent and malignant intensity and unchristian bitterness, exceeded anything recorded in the annals of history. He had seen his name, his life-work, all that he had lived and labored for, threatened with black destruction. Through this he had passed, emerging safely upon the firm shore of the continued love and confidence of his countrymen. Nor could he forget the assurances of fullest trust that came to him from public utterances and private letters of the many friends in England:

“For no other nation except our own have I such strong affinities as for Great Britain. My ancestors came from there. I have been bred on its literature. I have fed on the thought and feeling of its heroic men. I am a child, though born away from home, of the English people; and God forbid that I should be indifferent to those throes which are to bring forth the man-child yet! I look with profound sympathy, with the feeling of a child that venerates a parent in distress, upon that people; and I go there with a heart as warm for them as it was for its own country in the day of its division and trials. Twenty-three years—and what a space between! Twenty-three years! Darkness, thunder, tears, blood, and war—they have gone, and the white mantle of peace is spread over our shores, and the fields laugh and rejoice, and the heavens are propitious, and the earth is bountiful, and men are growing more and more into manliness. What hath God wrought!”

After a short rest in Queenstown, Mr. and Mrs. Beecher went direct to Liverpool; there on the 28th he had an opportunity to hear Mr. Gladstone, meeting him after the address.

The next day they proceeded to London, where, on the following Sunday, Mr. Beecher was to preach for Dr. Parker at the City Temple. On Thursday he attended the regular weekday services held in that church every Thursday, intending to enjoy the unusual pleasure of listening to somebody else’s preaching. But after the sermon Dr. Parker insisted upon his addressing the meeting and closing it in prayer. On calling Mr. Beecher to the pulpit, the doctor spoke a few words in tribute to his friend, concluding with the much-quoted sentence:

“My brethren, I am sorry to break in upon a man’s singularity, so that the palm may, even for a moment, seem to be divided between two; I am, however, constrained to violate the sanctity of a definite personality, and to say that last week there was in England a Grand Old Man: to-day there are two of them!”

On the 4th he preached for Dr. Parker, and on the 5th attended a dinner given to him by the lord mayor of London. On the 11th he preached for Dr. Henry Allen in London, and in the afternoon attended the service at Westminster Abbey, calling afterwards, by previous invitation, upon Dean Bradley, with whom were present a number of the clergymen of the Church of England, who had been invited to meet him. After tea the dean invited him to visit the various historical private rooms of the Abbey.

Many of the rooms were quite as familiar to Mr. Beecher, through his reading, though never seen before, as they were to the clergy of the church itself. These listened with intense interest to his familiar exposition and discussion, of what must have seemed to them to be their own peculiar province of history.

The “Jerusalem Chamber” greatly impressed him. “I am struck with awe. No room has greater interest to me, unless it be the ‘Upper Room.’”

He recalled with deep interest the many notable events that had there occurred intimately connected with religious history—the Westminster Assembly, the Confession of Faith, the two revisions of the Bible, etc. This was to Mr. Beecher a red-letter day, fuller of quiet, tender enjoyment, probably, than any other during his stay.

On the 19th, as he said, his play-day being over (he had preached every Sunday, generally twice, and delivered addresses every week), his work began. At Exeter Hall, London, where he delivered the last of the famous speeches in 1863, he delivered the first of his lectures in 1886. From that time on until the 21st of October he lectured, on an average, four nights a week, preaching every Sunday. A letter home gives some humorous experiences:

“... You would be amused at the way of public meetings in England and Scotland. After the lecture the chairman calls on some one, previously agreed upon, to move a vote of thanks, which he does, with a speech in which he pours out such a flood of compliments that before he is half through you lose all sense of personal identity, and wonder what heroic personage he is talking about, and then he moves the distinguished gentleman a vote of thanks. Thereupon the chairman informs the audience that Reverend or Professor So-and-so will second the motion. He takes up the thread of eulogy where the other bit it off, and winds you up with golden cords until you swing high in the heavens. Thereupon the vote is put by the chairman, the audience raise their hands, and then fall into a perfect tempest of clapping; as this subsides, you are expected to rise and, with modest self-depreciation, to explain how much you are elated and how grateful you are.... But it is after the assembly is dismissed that the most serious business of the evening begins. All on the platform shake hands; women climb up and shake you; at every step downward a host of hands—men, women, girls, and boys are reaching; the hallway is crowded with men that pull you, shake you, hustle you; the outward passage is lined with scores and scores, and finally, on the sidewalk, the rush to get your hand is fearful, and the police have to crowd them back to get you into the carriage, and then the windows bristle with more hands, and as the carriage moves on the crowd run along by its side still fiercely pushing each other to get a chance to shake.

“A ludicrous event happened at York. Just away from the hall is a bridge, for which foot-passengers pay a cent and carriages two cents. A woman or girl stands out on the sidewalk, extending her hand for the fee. After I had shaken hands at the hall, along the street, with scores, we came to the bridge, hardly yet shaking off the crowd. A hand was thrust into the window, which I shook; the woman said something indistinctly, which I afterwards learned was, ‘A penny, sir.’ Thinking it some affectionate blessing, I took her hand again, and gave it a more emphatic shake. She put her face in the window and said, ‘A penny, sir’; Pond meanwhile sitting by and laughing heartily.

“Your mother, too, frequently comes in for her share, and you can imagine how comical she looks as, with a modest smile and some surprise, she deals out her ‘thank you’s’ to the host of admirers.”

From July 4, when he preached first for Dr. Parker, until his departure, October 24, Mr. Beecher preached seventeen times, delivered nine public addresses and fifty-eight lectures. This was his summer vacation. From this period of restful recreation, such was his peculiar capacity and enjoyment of mental activity, he derived great benefit; and on his return home, after a few days’ rest from the disturbing influences of the, to him, ever-unrestful ocean, he declared that he never felt stronger, or more vigorous, or better equipped for work in his life. In the course of his stay he visited and lectured in each of the cities, and generally in the same hall where he had “fought with the wild beasts of Ephesus,” as he used to say, in 1863.

Just before his departure he addressed one meeting which, on account of its peculiar significance, we must mention more fully ere we pass on. So much has been said of late in certain quarters respecting Mr. Beecher’s theology, so many criticisms upon his orthodoxy, that his standing among so conservative a body as the English clergy may not be uninteresting. He had already addressed the London Congregational Board, the Congregational School (for the sons of Congregational clergymen), and had preached nearly twenty times, so that there had been a tolerably fair opportunity to learn something of his religious views, when he was invited to address the theological students on the subject of preaching.

The meeting was held in the City Temple, October 15. Six hundred students attended, the remaining space in the body of the house being occupied by ministers, who came from all parts of the country to attend this meeting. It was understood that Mr. Beecher would, after the address, answer such questions as any might want to ask. As the hour fixed was eleven o’clock in the forenoon, all of the theological schools had to rearrange their school-hours for that day, in order to allow the scholars a chance to attend. This was done with great readiness. After an address of nearly an hour, he offered to receive such questions, pertinent to the topic discussed, as might be put by the scholars or any of the clergy present, and occupied the remainder of his time in answering them.

On the 24th Mr. and Mrs. Beecher boarded the Etruria at Queenstown for their return home, reaching New York on the 31st.

In accordance with his expressed wishes no attempts were made to “receive” him, but he was allowed to go quietly home and rest, his people reserving their welcome until the following Sunday.^[19] On that day the church was decorated with flowers and evergreen vines, the pulpit being literally a bank of flowers, which ran up along the face of the great organ, even to the ceiling. After the service his people thronged around the pulpit-stairs for one shake of the hand and one word of welcome.

Early in the winter he began to seriously think of completing the second volume of the “Life of Christ.” Friends and members of his family had for some years been urging that the book should be completed. A fatality seemed to have hung over that book.

At the time when the Tilton conspiracy first broke out he had written a considerable part of Volume II., and undoubtedly would have soon finished it, when that outbreak, with the church persecutions that followed, interrupted the work, and for a number of years kept his mind so engrossed in other matters as to make writing an impossibility. This was followed by the business embarrassments of his publishers, and then the care of reorganizing the Christian Union. At last, peace and quiet having been restored, he began again to arrange for the completion of the work, when a vexatious suit was brought against him by Samuel Wilkeson, who had bought the original contract for the book from the publishers at an assignee’s sale, and, claiming that Mr. Beecher had broken his contract, sued for $60,000. The pendency of this suit stopped all further work on the book. After some delay the cause was tried and the complaint promptly dismissed by the court.

Twice, after the suit, an attempt was made by Mr. Beecher to accomplish the long-deferred completion of the book, but on each occasion something occurred to interrupt and further defer the work.

Finally, in January, 1887, he determined to complete the book, and at the same time to write his Autobiography. No small part of the credit for this final determination is due to Major J. B. Pond, who for many years past had been Mr. Beecher’s lecture manager, and who joined with Mr. Beecher’s family in urging the undertaking of both works. Finally it was decided that he would deliver no more lectures during the year 1887, but devote all of his time outside of his church duties to these literary labors.

In February a contract was made with Charles L. Webster & Co., of New York—our present publishers—to publish both books. The “Life of Christ” was to be completed before July 1, 1887, and the Autobiography before July 1, 1888.

With great zeal Mr. Beecher began at once to re-read, revise, and complete the “Life of Christ,” sometimes resting his mind by changing his work and writing a little on his Autobiography. In this way, by March 1, he had revised all of his former manuscript of the “Life of Christ,” and had completed it down to chapter xxv. Eight chapters of Volume II. were completed in this manner, and the outlines of the remaining three, within which space he intended to complete the work, were clearly blocked out in his own mind. As he got more and more back into the long-interrupted current of thought, his interest deepened, and with increased interest came greater mental ease.

Several times he remarked that he had never seen the subject so clearly and luminously in his mind before. It seemed at times as though Christ’s life were revealed to him with a clearness and a nearness that had never before been given him. In one of his exalted moods he burst out: “Twenty men could not in a life-time write all I now see; how can I put it into one book?”

But a few days before his last sickness an English clergyman called to see him, and after a pleasant chat, as he rose to leave, asked if there was any prospect of his completing the “Life of Christ.” Mr. Beecher replied that he was at work on it then, and would probably finish it in two or three months. The clergyman was greatly delighted, saying that he had been long waiting, hoping for the second volume. As the visitor left, Mr. Beecher, kneeling in his great arm-chair, as was often his wont when in a reverie, with one elbow on the chair-back, and chin resting in his open palm, gazed in silent abstraction out of the window facing him. Suddenly, his face lighting up, he exclaimed, as though thinking aloud: “Finish the Life of Christ! Finish the Life of Christ! Who can finish the Life of Christ! It cannot be finished.”

Prophetic words! Almost within the week he was called to that closer communion with his Saviour, and entered into that lasting peace for which he had so often longed.

During the day of Thursday, March 3, he was in the best of spirits and apparently perfect health. He had repeatedly stated since his return from England that he had never felt better, or better able to work. We had often during the past month jokingly called him the youngest boy in the house. None of us dreamed that Thursday was to end his long career of usefulness.

During the night he awoke, complaining of nausea, and was taken with vomiting, but soon fell asleep again. Friday morning he did not get up; though he roused when spoken to, he would immediately after fall asleep again. These symptoms disturbed no one, as they were quite common whenever he had any bilious trouble. The family thought that something he ate for supper had disagreed with him, and that he was working it off in his usual way, by sleeping and lying quiet.

Friday afternoon the doctor was for the first time called in. He thought, with the family, that the trouble was with the stomach, though some symptoms made him think that perhaps there might be some other complicating causes than mere biliousness.

Later in the evening, when one of his sons called in, he roused himself quite fully, called for toast, complained that his feet were cold, and that his head ached some. When asked what was the matter, he replied, jokingly, in a sort of half-sleepy manner:

“I had a dream last night. I thought that I was a duke and your mother a duchess, and I was trying to figure the interest on a hundred thousand pounds a year—you know I never was good at mathematics. It gave me a headache; but I’ll have your mother boil a page of arithmetic and make a tea of it. I’ll cure it homoeopathically.”

He was then helped to sit up in bed and eat his toast, which he did with eyes still closed, as though half-asleep. When laid back upon his pillow he fell asleep at once.

Saturday morning the dreadful truth first became apparent. Dr. Searle found that the left side showed unmistakable signs of paralysis, and then, recalling the previous symptoms, which had been attributed to other causes, said at once that it was apoplexy and that there was nothing to hope for. At first none would believe the diagnosis. Up to that moment all had thought the illness nothing that need cause any apprehension, when with the suddenness of a lightning-stroke came the announcement of utter hopelessness.

That no chance should be overlooked, Drs. Hammond and Helmuth, of New York, were called in consultation during the day, and confirmed the hopeless diagnosis. Nothing could be done—nothing but wait. The patient did not suffer; only those who stood about his bed, watching the beloved face, suffered.

Several times during Saturday afternoon, in response to loud questions put by the doctors, he roused enough to comprehend the questions and briefly answer them. With each attempt his articulation became more difficult.

After the consultations were over he never spoke again. His unconscious sleep became deeper and more profound through Sunday and Monday, until Tuesday morning, at twenty minutes to ten, his breath grew fainter—then stopped. The end he had hoped for was his. As warriors of old prayed that they might die in full armor, not a piece wanting or rusted from disuse, in the full activity of the fight, so he prayed that he might be spared the slow wasting of disease or the impairment of his physical and mental powers.

No black, no mourning drapery of any kind, was permitted about the house or on his coffin. At the door hung a beautiful wreath of delicate pink and white roses, gathered at the top by a large white satin bow, renewed afresh each morning by the hands of a beloved friend.

Against every form of mourning he had always revolted; to him death was but the gate to heaven, and the black symbols of ancient paganism he could not endure:

“The scholastic theology, filled with gloomy ideas sifted through stern Romish minds from teachings of pagan Romans has come down to us, until the representations of death that exist in the literature of Rome are more abominable and cruel than all the vices of all the Neros, or any other of the corrupt emperors. The scholastic conceptions of dying and of death are unworthy of reason, unworthy of conscience, and are blasphemous to God and to His government. They have no foundation in the New Testament, none certainly in the Old, and they ought to be purged out of our imaginations. Yet it lingers with us, and when death has come the household has not one note of triumph, not one star shines through the grief, nor one door of flashing light is opened. We cover the pictures, we shut up the instruments of music, we close the windows and shut out the light; we have a black hearse with plumes plucked from the wings of midnight, and we send for our minister, who doles out lugubrious, mournful themes, and we sing awful hymns. And then because one’s child has gained the coronation of glory, and is in the arms of Jesus, and rests from all labor and trial and temptation, we put on black—black over the head, black around the neck, black down to the feet, black inside! We carry the habiliments of woe and darkness and gloom, and think that we can see death everywhere. No other thing is as this. The one thing that men carry everywhere with them, and they are bound to share alike with brothers, strangers, friends, is that one thing that is borrowed from the despotism and cruelty of heathenism. Not one joy, not one thanksgiving, not one gleam of faith and hope, not one promise of Jesus Christ, not one single second of immortality and glory, is permitted to cheer the soul. All is night, black night, hopeless night. Sinful, the whole of it, unchristian, ungrateful!...

“One of the most beautiful things I ever saw in my whole European tour was the burial place of a Prussian queen who died during the great struggle against Napoleon, when the nation was ground almost to extinction, leaving her kingly husband almost inconsolable. At some distance from the capital, and in the midst of the solemn wood, he built a temple to her memory. It was of marble. As I entered, the light shone down through blue glass, casting a sad, sorrowful tone on all that its rays shone upon. But further on, upon entering the inner chamber, the cheerful light of God’s sun streamed in through the numerous windows and illuminated the ceiling, which was covered with glowing Scripture passages of death and immortality. And there in that blessed sunlight lay the sculptured form of the queen, forming the most perfect embodiment of rest, and peace, and triumph that my eyes ever beheld. There was nothing, sad or sorrowful, or painful to be seen; only the light of the glory of God as set forth in the sun; and the whole room glowed with cheer and brightness, and the monument was not gloomy but peaceful. I bless God with all my heart for that sight; it has been a comfort to me in many a dark day and long struggle of suffering, for already have I seen the triumph of death, the sweetness and the peace of victory, in that monumental marble.”

On Thursday a private funeral service was held at the house, the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Hall, of the Church of the Holy Trinity, officiating, in accordance with the expressed wish of Mr. Beecher. Between the two a deep and lasting friendship had existed. In the dark days, when not a few of the clerical brethren of his own denomination in Brooklyn doubted, or, hesitating, held back awaiting the result, Dr. Hall, in a manner characteristic of his brave and manly nature, went out of his way to show, in public, his confidence and love for Mr. Beecher. The latter attending service one day, during the time when the clouds hung heaviest, at the Church of the Holy Trinity, the doctor, seeing him in the congregation, descended into the aisle, and, taking his friend by the hand, led him to a seat within the chancel. Mr. Beecher, always forgetful of injuries, never forgot an act of friendship. It was his oft-repeated wish that, should he be called first, the voice of this brave, beloved friend might speak the words of cheer and comfort to those he left behind.

At the close of the service, Company G, of the Thirteenth Regiment—which, having been largely recruited from the young men of Plymouth Church, was called the “Plymouth Company,” and affectionately styled by Mr. Beecher “My boys”—with arms reversed, banners furled, and muffled drums, marched to the house, and, as a guard of honor, escorted the body of their pastor, chaplain, and friend to the church, as he was borne for the last time within its doors, and laid him, silent for the first time, at the foot of that pulpit from which his voice, during well-nigh forty years, had so often rung out to right the wrong, to lift up the down-trodden, to uphold the weak, to elevate mankind; that had so often preached comfort to the sorrowing, light to those in great darkness, pointing out the way of life to struggling sinners, and revealing that boundless love of God which was the keynote of his theology.

Till Saturday morning an almost continuous stream passed through the church to look in a last farewell upon the face of a friend, scarcely ending with midnight, renewed again by daylight, all day long. Old men and children, rich and poor, met to mourn a common loss.

He rested in a bed of flowers, the coffin hidden from sight by twining smilax, covered with white pinks and rosebuds; pulpit and organ buried in flowering shrubs and graceful plants, decorated with many floral designs.

On Friday morning the public funeral service was held, Dr. Hall preaching the sermon.

Simultaneous with the services at Plymouth, funeral services were held in the three nearest adjoining churches.

On the proclamation of the mayor, business was suspended during the day; the Legislature adjourned, sending a special committee to attend as its representatives at the funeral.

On Sunday a memorial service was held in Plymouth Church, in which the representatives of every creed took part—Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant—and nearly every denomination of Protestantism vying each with another in paying tributes of respect, gratitude, and love to their common brother—a most fit, practical example of that for which he had always preached, the universal brotherhood in God.

On Saturday, the 12th, the body was taken quietly to Greenwood.

“To-day Henry Ward Beecher’s body was buried in Greenwood. His hearse was followed in sympathy and honor by millions of his countrymen. The mourners were of all kindred and of every language. Not in this generation, at least, has there been a funeral so nobly significant. In the stately procession walked the viewless forms of principles, of governments, of nations, and of races. The guardian spirit of the slave whom he helped to liberate; the fair, sad genius of the Green Isle, for which he so often and so eloquently pleaded; the dusky representative of the Chinese Empire, in behalf of whose sons he again and again demanded justice; the fair form of modern science with the radiance of the morning sun on her queenly brow; the benign angel of charity, clothed in the whiteness of that purity which renders sin invisible; democracy, with her free step, flowing hair, and cap of many hues; Columbia, full of matronly grace and benignant as the atmosphere of June; and Christianity, calm, motherly, and forgiving—these are the pall-bearers by whom the body of our hero was borne to its resting-place....”^[20]

On a sunny slope in that most beautiful of all cemeteries, overlooking the Bay of New York, is the grave of Henry Ward Beecher. But it is only the grave: “When I fall, and am buried in Greenwood, let no man dare to stand over the turf and say, ‘Here lies Henry Ward Beecher,’ for God knows that I will not lie there. Look up; if you love me, and if you feel that I have helped you on your way home, stand with your feet on my turf and look up; for I will not hear anybody that does not speak with his mouth toward heaven.”

With all our sorrow we cannot begrudge him the rest and peace so well earned, nor that for which he had so often prayed—a quiet, painless departure while yet each faculty was unimpaired. He remembered with deepest pain the failing years of his own father, who lingered till all his faculties became impaired:

“My venerable father, who was a second David in his time—a man of war—and yet who had as sweet a heart as ever an angel woman had, lived through many last years of weakness and obscuration, and I had to remember a great way back to find my father. It was very pitiful, very painful.

“That is one reason why I do not want to be an old man. I hope God will have so much consideration for my weakness—if it be a weakness—as to let me drop down in my harness and in the full energy of work. I have no fear whatever of dying: it is only the fear of living that I have before my eyes....

“Some persons talk about a man having passed through a stormy life, and sitting now at the end of his life in quiet, preparing himself for heaven. Heaven does not want any such preparation as that. That is the best preparation which a man makes when he is using the whole force of his being in his day and time. I would rather die with the harness on and be dragged out by the heels. I would like to fall in the traces. You cannot help scoring one year against yourself and growing old in one way; but it is the outward man that is growing old. The wine that is in you ought to be growing better and better every year. Time should mellow and ripen it. True, if a man’s power is dried up, he cannot do more than he has strength for; but every man should do up to the measure of his strength, and not forget the sudden appearing of God in his own day and in his own time.

“I love those streams that run full, clear to the ocean. Some men there are who are like mountain streams, torrent-fed, that boom in the spring, with wondrous glory of fulness and power, and go rushing through the earlier months, but slacken their speed, and by midsummer are only a trickling reminiscence of the river. I like to think of streams like the old Merrimac, that begin work up near their head-waters, and never run a league without turning some mighty wheel of industry, and have no vacation to the end, but go into the sea with the very foam on their surface.”

For him death had no terrors; it was the gate opening into eternal rest and peace—that peace for which he had so often yearned and longed in his later years. Death was the welcome friend, not the dreaded foe.

“Is there anything sweeter to grief and sorrow than that passage where the New Testament, sweet book of the soul, speaks of dying? Let Tuscanized Romans talk of death; let heathen mythologies come to us with skulls, and cross-bones, and hideous images of dying, of the monster Death, of the tyrant Death, of the scythe-armed Death, of a grim and terrible fate; but what terror can any of these representations have for us when we have for our encouragement and hope the promises of the New Testament?

“On a summer’s day the gentle western wind brings in all the sweets of the field and the garden; and the child, overtasked by joy, comes back weary, and climbs for sport into the mother’s lap; and before he can sport he feels the balm of rest stealing over him, and lays his curly head back upon her arm; and look! he goes to sleep; hush! he has gone to sleep, and all the children stand smiling. How beautiful it is to see a child drop asleep on its mother’s arm! And it is said, ‘He fell asleep in Jesus.’ Is there anything so high, so noble, or divine, as the way in which the New Testament speaks of dying? How near death is, and how beautiful!

“If you have lost companions, children, friends, you have not lost them. They followed the Pilot. They went through airy channels, unknown and unsearchable, and they are with the Lord; and you are going to be with Him, too. I die to go, not to Jerusalem, but to the New Jerusalem. I die, not to wait in the rock-ribbed sepulchre, which shall hold me sure; I die, that when this body is dropped I shall have a place, in the inward fulness of my spiritual power, with the Lord.

“Then welcome gray hairs! they come as white banners that wave from the other and higher life. Welcome infirmities! they are but the loosening of the cords preparatory to taking down the tabernacle. Welcome troubles! they are but the signs that we are crossing the sea, and that not far away is our home—that house of our Father in which are many mansions, where dwells Jesus, the loved and all-loving. And let us rejoice that He has gone from the body, that He may be ever present in the spirit, and that ere long we may be with Him.”

His life had been full and complete. Unconsciously, in words of matchless beauty, he painted his own picture when he said:

“And the most beautiful thing that lives on this earth is not the child in the cradle, sweet as it is. It is not ample enough. It has not had history enough. It is all prophecy. Let me see one who has wrought through life; let me see a great nature that has gone through sorrows, through fire, through the flood, through the thunder of battle, ripening, sweetening, enlarging, and growing finer and finer, and gentler and gentler, that fineness and gentleness being the result of great strength and great knowledge accumulated through a long life—let me see such a one stand at the end of life, as the sun stands on a summer afternoon just before it goes down. Is there anything on earth so beautiful as a rich, ripe, large, glowing, and glorious Christian heart? No, nothing.”

APPENDIX.