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of their rugged toil, whose scanty means will not, perhaps, enable them to assume the outward livery of woe, we are apt to think alone of the hardships they have endured through life, and bid God speed them to the home they have found at last! It is natural then to consider the grave, not so much as the gate through which they must pass to judgment, as the peaceful haven "where the weary are at rest;" their bed may be cold and damp, but we think of the bitter wind, and the chilling rain, which falls upon the houseless head; privation and misery have been their earthly lot, and there, at least, they will hunger no more, and thirst no more. But when the pomp of woe is moving through our streets, when the pacing steeds come slowly on, and the sable plumes are waving, almost in mockery, over the prey to corruption which is concealed beneath, it is then that the awful transition from life to death speaks loudly to the heart of all, to none perhaps more loudly than to those, who might once have envied the rich man's lot. How far this feeling may be rational and just, or how far it may be excited by external objects, which, when compared with that which shall be revealed to all alike, are but the shadow of a shade, it is useless to enquire, and difficult to define; it is, assuredly, a general feel

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ing, and therefore we have the better hope of being enabled to improve and sanctify it to the general good.

If he, indeed, whose mortal pilgrimage is closed, had dwelt among us for a longer term of years, instead of the remnant only of his days, you might have listened with greater interest; and I might have been able to speak more forcibly, not only of his death, but of his christian character and life. Still, however, there is matter, if not for instruction, at least for deep and solemn meditation, even in this very fact, that he came among us, only, as we have seen, to depart for ever; and that almost before his person, and the place of his abode, could be known to all who lived around him, the angel of death was sent to summon him away; and the place which had known him can know him now no more. Hence, my brethren, when I reflected on the peculiar circumstances which marked the last brief period of his life; and thought upon those passages of Holy Writ, which remind us so eloquently that "man who is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and never continueth in one stay;" it seemed to me that none would express the reflections, which occurred to all when his dissolution was announced, more appropriately than the words which I have

selected for the text. If a stranger had met his funeral train, and accosting one of the gazing crowd, had asked his history, he might have been answered almost in the words of the Prophet :He came among us but two short years ago, to set his house in order, and to die. Such is indeed the story which would have been told by all; may it vividly impress the startling truth, that "in the midst of life we are in death!"

Shattered by long exposure to the burning sun, and pestilential dew, of a foreign climate, he visited this coast in search of health, and he found a grave-he "set his house in order," and called around him all those comforts, to which his station and wealth entitled him, and then, exchanged them for a coffin and a vault-he came indeed to end his days among us, yet expecting, as we all expect, a few more years of tranquillity and ease, but his days were numbered, his course was nearly run-he might have thought that the evening of his life was drawing slowly in, when suddenly it was overcast with the night of death, and the darkness of the grave! All that is generally known of our departed brother may he thus concisely told; and although we cannot expect to gather so much instruction from the last page of the story of a life, as when the whole is read,

there may be points of solemn application, and mournful interest, connected with its close; and such, assuredly, were to be found in his.

Still, although I cannot pretend to develope, in all its features, the character of one, with whom my acquaintance was so lately formed, and so soon dissolved; and sensible as I feel that unadvised flattery would be profaneness here-thus much I can affirm, that when I saw him lowered to his last abode, and heard the fervent prayer ascending, that we, who were assembled there, “might rest in Christ, as our hope is this our brother doth,”that hope was truly felt; no act or word of his, that I had witnessed, was remembered then, which could give rise to the shuddering apprehension, that God might withhold his mercy from the departed soul, Foibles he might have had; but a merciful God may not mark them so severely as his fellow-men. Of faults he may have been guilty too, for none are free, but I observed them not; and if I had, I would leave them to be reported by those who are holier than myself; I would only warn them, when they undertake the task, to let the truth, and nothing but the truth, be told that it is a cowardly, as well as unchristian act, to bear false witness against the dead!

To me it is more gratifying to remember now,

that his conduct in the intercourse of life, was always friendly, and hospitable, and kind-that no vicious or profane expression, denoting a corrupted heart, ever in my presence passed his lips-and moreover, if others think and speak as charitably of him, as he ever did of all his neighbours, that his memory, like his ashes, will rest in peace. By those, who knew him well, I am assured that all the duties of life, to which he was called, were meritoriously discharged; that he was a dutiful son, a faithful guardian, a sincere and constant friend. And why, if "charity thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity," should that good word be doubted, which cannot be disproved? Why should we not rejoice in hope, now his account is closed, that when the books are opened, no dark and deep offence may be written there against his name; no sin unto death recorded, for which the Saviour cannot intercede, for which the blood of the spotless Lamb may have flowed in vain!

And there is one, not far from these sacred walls, who is weeping now in the solitude and stillness of the house of death-who, if the agony of grief can speak and be believed, would convince even the coldest heart, that sorrow such as hers could only spring from the bitter recollection, how

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