impossible to doubt his genuine humility, or jealous determination not to be deceived by any contagious sentiment of personal reverence or honor springing up in a generation that was largely ignorant of his writings. Yet he fully and greatly enjoyed these tributes and more and more, the longer he lived. Of Mr. Bryant's life-long interest in the fine arts; his large acquaintance with our older artists and close friendship with some of them; of his place in the Century Club, of which he was perhaps the chief founder, and of which he died the honored president, I could speak with full knowledge; but artists and centurions both are sure to speak better for themselves in due time, as the city and the nation surely will. I must reserve the few moments still left me to bear the testimony which no one has a better right to offer to Mr. Bryant's strictly religious character. A devoted lover of religious liberty, he was an equal lover of religion itself; not in any precise dogmatic form, but in its righteousness, reverence, and charity. What his theology was you may safely infer from his regular and long attendance in this place of Christian worship. Still he was not a dogmatist, but preferred practical piety and working virtue to all modes of faith. What was obvious in him for twenty years past was an increasing respect and devotion to religious institutions and a more decided Christian quality in his faith. I think he had never been a communicant in any church until he joined ours, fifteen years ago. From that time, nobody so regular in his attendance on public worship, in wet and dry, cold and heat, morning and evening, until the very last month of his life. The increasing sweetness and beneficence of his character, meanwhile, must have struck his familiar friends. His last years were his devoutest and most humane years. He became beneficent as he grew able to be so, and his hand was open to all just need, and to many unreasonable claimants. The first half or even two thirds of his life had been a hard struggle with fortune. And he had acquired saving habits, thanks chiefly to the prudence of his honored and everlamented wife. But the moment he became successful and acquired the means of beneficence, he practised it bountifully, indeed, perhaps often credulously. For he was simple-hearted and unsuspecting, easily misled by women's tears and entreaties, and not always with the fortitude to say Nowhen only his money was at stake. Indeed he had few defensive weapons either against intrusion or supplication, and could with difficulty withstand the approaches of those that fawned upon him, or those that asked his countenance for selfish purposes. Perhaps he understood their weaknesses, but he had not the heart to medicine them with brave refusal. He endowed a public library in Cummington, his birthplace, at a cost of many thousands. He built and gave a public hall to the village of Roslyn, L. I., the chosen and beloved summer home of his declining years. When, at his request, I went to dedicate it to public use, and at a proper moment asked, "What shall we call this building?" The audience shouted "Bryant Hall.” "No," said the modest benefactor, "let it be known and called simply 'The Hall,'' and The Hall it was baptized. I shall have spoken in vain if I have not left upon your hearts the image of an upright, sincere, humane and simple yet venerable manhood-a life full of outward honors and inward worth. When I consider that I have been speaking of one whose fame fills the world, I feel how vain is public report compared with the honor of God and the gratitude and love of humanity! It is the private character of this unaffected, Christian man that it most concerns us to consider and to imitate. He was great as the world counts greatness, he was greater as God counts it. He is gone! and the city and the country is immeasurably poorer that his venerable and exalted presence no adorns and crowns our assemblies. But heaven is richer! The Church of Christ adds one unaffected, unsanctimonious saint to its calendar. The patriarch of American literature is dead. The faithful Christian lives evermore: "Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my very heart And shall not soon depart." -Bryant's lines "To a Waterfowl." We are about to bear his remains to their quiet and green resting-place, by the side of his beloved wife- the good angel of his life—in Roslyn, L. I. Let me read in conclusion the warrant for this step in his own poem called "June," which I am persuaded you will feel to be the only fit conclusion of these memorial words: "I gazed upon the glorious sky, And the green mountains round, 'Twere pleasant that in flowery June, And groves a cheerful sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, "A cell within the frozen mold, A coffin borne through sleet, And icy clods above it rolled, While fierce the tempests beat Away! I will not think of these, Earth green beneath the feet, "There, through the long, long summer hour, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers, Stand in their beauty by, The oriole should build and tell His love-tale close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife bee and humming-bird. "And what if cheerful shouts at noon Come from the village sent, Or song of maids beneath the moon Of my low monument? I would the lovely scene around Might know no sadder sight nor sound. "I know that I no more should see The season's glorious show, Nor would its brightness shine for me, But if, around my place of sleep, The friends I love should come to weep, They might not haste to go. Soft airs, and song, and light and bloom "These to their softened hearts should bear The thought of what has been, And speak of one who cannot share The gladness of the scene; Whose part, in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills, Is that his grave is green; And deeply would their hearts rejoice COLENSO OHN WILLIAM COLENSO, a distinguished English theologian, was born College, Cambridge University. After taking orders in the Established Church he was tutor at Cambridge for several years prior to becoming rector of Forncett Saint Mary, Norfolk, in 1846. He was by this time well known as a mathematician, and had published treatises on algebra and arithmetic which have been adopted as college text-books. In 1853 he was consecrated bishop of Natal in South Africa. In 1861 he published a "Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans," which speedily aroused the heresy-hunters of the day, and when, the next year, he put forth the first volume of "The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined," an almost universal storm of theological abuse was at once directed against him. The subsequent controversy arising from this event proved most disastrous to the welfare of the South African Church and shook the Church of England to its centre. Colenso was thereupon deposed by the Bishop of Cape Town, but the English Privy Council overruled his action and decided that Bishop Colenso should receive the income of his The Bishop was inhibited from preaching in several English dioceses and continued for many years to be the target of theological hostility. He kept on, however, with his critical labors, completing the work on the Pentateuch in 1879. He was greatly beloved by the Zulus, and labored for years to secure just treatment for them. He died at Durban, Natal, June 20, 1883, and since his death much of the bitter feeling against his biblical studies has passed away. Beside a series of twelve mathematical works and a long list of books in the Zulu tongue for the instruction of the natives, Bishop Colenso was the author of "Village Sermons" (1854); "Ten Weeks in Natal" (1855); "Lectures on the Pentateuch and Moabite Stone; "The Worship of Baalim in Israel," from the Dutch of R. Dozy; "First Lessons in Science;" and two series of "Natal Sermons." see. THE EXAMPLE OF OUR LORD [From "Natal Sermons."] E often say that our Lord's example is to be the guide to us in all our duties of life. WR And so, indeed, it should be,—yet not in the way that many seem to suppose, by his having actually shared in the performance of those duties and resisted the temptations more especially connected with them. . . . ▲ (7451) |