that dancing eye again? Shall we never again hear with joy that cordial greeting? I can hardly believe that he lies helpless in the coffin here before us.

Then, as to his mental activity, we never saw him, in all these many past years, that his mind was not in full movement--in full play; that he was not engaged in a tough, sturdy, mental struggle with some matter on hand, or reaching out in plans which were always for the benefit of mankind--for selfishness had a very small part in his composition. There was a live, a bright prospectus always within him, which he had a cheerful confidence, and with good ground that he could realize; and how many anticipations of his he did realize! I think he could say, as few men can, to God, who endowed him as few men have been endowed, "I have done what I could." God gave him great powers, extraordinary capacities; He gave him a genius for work; and throughout all his working years (indeed they were working years), he put forth those powers to the utmost; and that he did with them the best that could be done, stands to his record. It is a glorious record for any man. Is it possible that all this activity of mind is forever stayed, arrested at its very height and prime, and in its mid-career? I do not believe it for a moment; it is impossible to believe it.

years

Now, as to his life in its affections. Only those (and they are not few) to whom God gave it for a good gift to be in close personal relations with him, can know what an ocean of love his heart was outpouring—always outpouring. It was more blessed to give than to receive with him, always. When you met him it was evident that it was he that gave and you that received, liberally. It was perfectly evident that his ruling idea always was to make his meeting with you a pleasure to you as well as to himself. He went through these of his labor, I believe, with a great interest, in the first place, in the public to which he belonged, and, in the second place, with a deep and tender interest in all those in the private circles to which he belonged, dominant in him; and God has given him to confer unusual benefit and pleasure upon us. He has been a maker of happiness in this world-this beloved man. A great many of us feel that we never can enjoy such a friendship again; our hearts are in his coffin; and a large part of our hearts are going into the grave, never again to live in this world. Oh, that God might make all our hearts and our lives as rich as his has been!

May God comfort those (He alone can do it) who stand most bereaved in this desolate time. May the Lord approach them as He

knows how. May the Lord draw near to them, and by those immortal intimations which He can give, lead them into the region of serene, triumphant rest in Jesus Christ.

HYMN." Friend after friend departs."
PRAYER.-By Rev. H. W. Beecher.

HYMN." There's a land that is fairer than day."

Public Service held at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.

PROCESSIONAL ANTHEM.-"Fair are these houses, fairer far the dwelling built by the Master."

HYMN.-"Tranquil and peaceful is the path to heaven."
SCRIPTURE.-Psalm XC.

HYMN.--Solo, "O heart, that, sad and weary, dost count thy load too great."

SCRIPTURE.-II. Cor. IV., 12-18; II. Cor. V., 1–8.
REMARKS.-By Rev. H. W. Beecher.

There has come down to us from the ages the yearning and the sorrowing cry that life is so short; that its scenes are so interrupted ; that its outcome, often, is so small; and especially when life has been abundant in its offerings and blessings, that death, like an untimely frost, falls upon the garden of our expectations and blights everything. There is a longing in nature itself that the seed should not perish with the blossom, but should sow itself again somewhere in a fairer clime and in a longer summer. Talk as we will in regard to these subjects (and I am not saying that that is true which we want to be true, and that there is a heaven of hope and immortality merely because we long for it; I am not entrapped in any such thought as that), we must own that this hope, which has sprung up even in the barbaric soul and rudely pictured to itself another life out of the material with which the yet unopened thought of man could best furnish itself, has grown brighter, stronger, deeper, as men have emerged from ignorance and have advanced in civilization. It meets rebuffs, resistance or a calm endurance of unbelief in only here and there a pioneering soul that goes into the realm of the uncertain future, seeking by the analogies of inferior matter to determine what shall be the estate of superior matter. And whatever men may say in regard to the organization of the soul, whether it be regarded as an immutable spirit, or whether it be regarded as the most exquisitely organized matter, one thing is certain--that if it be spirit, it does not necessarily perish with the body; and if it be

matter, it does not necessarily perish with the body; for, as rude and inchoately organized matter is subject to its own laws, as compared with the highest forms of organization, so it may be that this asserted last development of matter has laws occult and unknown to us, and is neither to be measured by our measure nor weighed by our scales, but weighed and measured by laws of its own. On either hand, therefore, I do not feel that we are driven into unbelief, or into a hopeless yearning or longing that amounts to unbelief in the continued ongoing of our personal existence organized in this life.

And why should we wish to doubt it? Why should we, who are faring through this troubled life, so often becalmed or bestormed, so often over-weighted, so continually helpless in the presence of those great movements which are going on in the visible and in the invisible world, wish to blot out almost the only hope left to wretchedness, to weakness and to despondency.

There is not a cradle which empties its contents into the grave, that does not cry out to us to believe that there is something beyond the grave. There is not an anchored love which finds itself driven from its moorings that does not beseech us to believe that there is a haven beyond. There is not one single experience of wasting strength, whether it be by sickness or by age, that does not lament in the thought that we shall have accomplished all that is given us to accomplish, and that we shall have no other chance. Whether we look to superior wisdom, to affection, or to sentiment, they all point alike in the one direction of the beyond, the greater, the nobler-in the direction of that sphere where human life, comprehensively, shall evolve and take on its next and grandest stage.

But there is another view of this subject which has its standpoint in pride and the better sense of pride. It is an emanation of that royalty which every man feels in himself; for there is not a man worthy of the name who, at some hour, does not know that he is crowned and that he is a king; and by as much as we feel the sweep of intellect, and survey our knowledge, and the power of knowledge; by as much as we feel heroic impulses and are driven to noble and generous deeds thereby ;. by as much as we have those flashes and intimations, obscure though they may be, but of endless power; by so much we refuse to die and to be dead eternally; by so much we demand that there shall be to us something beyond (even in their best estate) those miserable experiences of life which are rebuked day by day by our ideality, and which day by day are put under foot and measured at their true value by our imagination.

When, therefore, there comes to us, clear as the unspotted heaven washed after storms, and associated with all that is most venerable and useful, a faith that brings with it all the most noble minds that ever lived on the face of the earth-when such a hope hangs over the future, why should we forge missiles to destroy it? Why should we smash the bells that are ringing out this hope, and bearing us on waves of music over the rude difficulties of life, into the blessed conception of another life?

And where shall we find expressions more simple, more manly, and more sublime, than those that were uttered by the apostle Paul, in these fourth and fifth chapters of the Second Corinthians? Where is there a thought of death that so rebukes the ineffable weakness of a poor, defrauding materialism?

Is death, then, the running down of the clock? and is that the end? Is death that which makes a man only the same as an animal or a vegetable-a decaying root, a wasted seed-that and nothing more? No; the apostle, looking down into the grave, says, "The man is not buried there. Death is buried there. Life is there testified to. Death is swallowed up in life."

We are united, then, in that grand hope which has been the best legacy of days gone by, inspired by our best feelings when we are in our most noble state, inspired by all the hopes that we have, inspired by all our pride, and inspired by the faith of immortality.

As to reasoning, when I require reasoning to make me admire the grandeur of the Transfiguration of Raphael, or of the figures which Michel Angelo painted; when I call mathematics and logic to teach me that these are sublime and beautiful; then I will need reasoning to keep my soul from belief in the degrading abomination of annihilation. Nay, I hold with ineffable faith to my very soul the bright vision of a world to come, where the glory of the Lord is revealed, and where we are lifted without hindrance or obstruction into the full sphere and dignity of sons of God.

We are gathered, this morning, my friends, at this unaccustomed hour, and in this unaccustomed place, not alone to express our profound sympathy with a beloved household whose door has been opened from the earthly into the heavenly sphere, but also to speak of one who, as a citizen and as a professional laborer in the great fields of knowledge and of attainment, has done well by the commonwealth, and by mankind. Without stopping to rank men, as to which is highest or lowest, all men are honorable who keep time to the great march of humanity and of benevolence. Some may be

leaders, and some may be subalterns. The honor of the lowest is greater than any other honor bestowed upon mankind; but as they go up and their sphere and privilege of usefulness is widened, so also is our intelligent admiration of them, and so, likewise, is our desire to express, in some worthy way, our esteem for them, and our honoring thought of them.

Our friend who has gone from us, richly endowed, holding in himself the legacy of the past, springing from a parentage that had in it a gathered excellence of the best New England sort (there may be better, but not on this soil), born under propitious influences, with the luminous door of education thrown wide open, following the bent of his genius, turned aside from one path of scholarship, from classical lore, to that scientific walk which had in it not alone a wide range of intelligence and invention, but also a wide range of in

struction.

Now, there has come to be a better understanding in our days-an understanding that men who build in matter, or distribute it, or change its forms to better uses, are almoners of God's great benevolence. If one were so rich that he could give to men a thousand tons of grain, that certainly would be a great gift of benevolence; but if one should, by his invention, so alter the machinery of agriculture that the poorest man could earn a thousand tons of grain for himself, that would be a greater benevolence, and a greater gift. If one were to supply all the implements of a refined industry, himself paying the cost, that would certainly be a very noble benefaction; but if one may take hold, as a master-spirit, of all the metals, and command them into forms, and at such rates that they shall become the common property of the whole community, is not that a greater benefaction? He who supplies the lack of men gives a great deal; but he who teaches men to supply their own lack gives even more. And the whole pursuit of the life of him who has left us and gone. singing to a higher bough of the Tree of Life, was a beneficence; it was an organized bounty. Consciously and unconsciously, he served his day and generation in this field; and with such fruitfulness and such success that it is the testimony of all his compeers and associates that he stood easily among the first.

But quite aside from this, his spirit, his manliness, his exquisite modesty and diffidence have plucked all the nettles of envy; and he is crowned with no thorns among the bay leaves, and stands honored because he was beloved by all those who were most intimate