CHAPTER X.

PEACE.

Felix opportunitate mortis.

"It was a good time for him to die."

"to add greater honours to his age

Than man could give him, he died, fearing God."

AN unfinished letter of my Father's, almost the last he wrote at home, dated within a month of his death, ends abruptly so;

This is the time of the examination at St. Mary's Hall. The College examination is just finished. Of course, I have been and still am very busy. In two days I start on my Southern visitation. So I go. I a am in perfect health. My work agrees with me, I suppose, because I agree with my work.

From such health, in such heart, to such incessant labour he went out to die. It is as when the soldier's hand is stiffened, in the firm grasp of his sword; or the falling earth catches the miner, spade in hand; and death perpetuates the attitude of work.

The last year of my Father's life was one of gathering and increasing peace. The great unrest of the years of strife had passed away, long before. But even the gratefulness of rest, has too much memory of fatigue, to be thought repose. Through that, as enmities were softened, and bitterness done away, and the storm of feelings calmed, he was entering into quietness. There was no relaxation of work. In some ways it increased. But there was less weight to bear about, in going to it. There were new gleams of sunlight in his home. Others grew up about him, to be hands, somewhat, to his head. And the greenness of age seemed springing up about him, the desert, partly passed. We counted it, a promise of calmness and happiness, here. God meant it, as the vestibule into the peace of a more lasting and perfect home. Many of the refreshments of life, that from year to year had passed away, were gathering about him again. The rays that all diverged, seemed to converge and concentrate. At home, though busy always, he was relieved of much of the drudgery of his

work. And he had leisure, more than ever before, to be away from home, not on official duties. Four times during the winter, he went away to marry some of his children. And in their happiness and constant love, he was glad, too. In one of these visits to New York, he had found time to be the guest of one of his most tried friends, and had spent a day in inaking calls, gathering up what were left, of the links that bound his heart, to those whom he had loved in earlier days.

His correspondence with Dr. Sprague, in regard to the memorial notices which he prepared for the last volume of his Annals," was a great gratification and pleasure to him. And the task of taking off new impressions, from his heart, of the faithful images of his best beloved, and longest known, soothed him, with that best comforter, that softens smiles with tears, and brightens tears with smiles, the recalling of past joys. In Washington, his welcome on every side was most cordial. "Quite the belle of the evening;" an old friend said to him, at Lady Napier's. And he came back from each of these excursions, with a new sense of the love and admiration, whose presence, before, he had not time to find out. In the death of my Grandmother, and the care and beauty of her grave, with all its sorrow, there was a calm and quiet consolation, as though the opening door that received her into Paradise, had let out on his soul, somewhat of the spiritual peace that there abides. When the cable celebration was announced, he entered into it, at first as a sort of penalty for unbelief, and wanting to make up, for his mistrust of the success. A spark from it seemed to touch him. And he came home, freshened and strengthened, by the welcome of his presence and his words. His cable song was the result. He wrote it, the day after his return, and called me out of my class, to show it to me and to tell me his plan, and from me he went, and sent it safely to Dr. Ogilby, by telegraph, with real glee. The invitation to deliver the Mt. Vernon address, was very pleasant to him, coming from those who had known and watched him through every thing, and whom, no ties of faith and worship bound to him. It was a simple, incidental, public renewal of confidence and admiration. The enthusiastic reception of its thrilling eloquence braced him, and brightened him, extremely. And the close and constant intercourse, brought about by it, with Dr. Van Rensselaer,-an intimacy that ran over into the most graceful acts of thought, and kindness, during his illness; and then expressed itself, in the outspoken, earnest, appreciative tribute, to his blessed memory, was most grateful and agreeable to him. His work in all its details, was prosperous beyond any previous results. It was the very time for him to live. And so, he entered into

VO.L I.-33

life. The vigorous, spreading, sheltering tree of his own planting, offered its green and fragrant coolness for his rest. Its branches green his sleeping place; and he passed, to be under the greener, shadier palms of Paradise. During the winter, we had noticed now and then, a weariness of walk and look. But he was never fresher-hearted, never fuller of vigour of mind, never freer in the luxuriance of graceful thought. His cable speech, and "cable song;" his Washington oration, his last address at St. Mary's Hall, are among his greatest works. He spoke oftener, of being tired, and went earlier to bed. But no thought or fear of what it meant, ever crossed our hearts. He had conquered so many times; his strength of soul and body were so superhuman; his necessity to us, to all his work, to all God's work, was so great, that no one ever thought, he could die. And in such an atmosphere, of sacred sorrow, of unusual pleasure, of serene refreshment, of gathering, growing peace, the winter passed away, through what he called "the old and new year's isthmus," till the spring brought his visitation duties, again. Closely and constantly confined with the examinations at the two Schools, he wrote his address to the graduates, on the morning of the day it was delivered. "I had not one idea," he told me afterwards, "till I went out and saw your bees, this morning." And after all the weariness of that day, he set off so early the next morning, to his month of work, that our parting kiss and blessing, were over-night. The visitation, entered on, as all his notices ran, "if it please God," covered thirty-two parishes, and was to be made in twenty-one days. He visited fifteen. During the last week of incessant storm, he was in the most exposed parts of the Diocese, near the seashore, and travelling only in carriages. His last day's work, included Shrewsbury, Middletown, and Red Bank. And in Trinity Church, Red Bank, on the evening of the fifth Sunday in Lent, (Passion Sunday) April 16th, he officiated for the last time, preaching his last sermon from those great words, "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord;" with these last solemn words, that close it, "Thou, who didst die for us and rise again, bid us to die to sin, help us to rise to righteousness; that bearing here Thy cross, we may hereafter share Thy Crown." We had not looked for him at home, until Wednesday. But news of the death, at Mt. Holly, of his old and beloved friend, the Senior Presbyter of the Diocese, Dr. Morehouse, hastened him back. He had made a day, among his last at home, to go to him, with sympathy and cheer, and the Church's words of comfort. And when his death was announced, he came at once, to be there for the burial. When I first saw him, in the garden with a bunch

of flowers, he seemed weary, and stiff, and lame. And at dinner, every thing was an effort, and he was subdued, and quiet, and worn. He went at once to bed. Still he counted on going to Mt. Holly, the next day, and told me how to arrange his plans. We thought but little of it. Exposure and fatigue seemed fully to account for it; and after one day's just such illness, a month before, he had left home for a visitation, at sunrise, the next morning. But in the morning, he could not leave his bed; for the painfulness and helplessness of the rheumatism. Still he would have me go, and lying there, forgot his suffering, to write a line of sympathy, by me, to those, who wept over their Father's coffin. Until Thursday night, he was almost, just the same. We saw no alarm. He thought the most of it, but said very little. Indeed until the very last, our only cause of alarm seemed his unwillingness to put off, his longing for rest, and God's gracious purpose of giving it to him. On Thursday night he was more ill and when I came in, from Evening Prayer, told me he "was very sick," and begged me to pray with him. Again he was better, giving various directions, postponing, most reluctantly, and only one by one, his appointments; but subduing, by silence or by contradiction, our hopeful and confident assurance that he was less ill than he thought, and already somewhat better. But on Wednesday, for the first time we were alarmed, and from that he grew gradually worse. On Maundy Thursday morning, his thoughts wandered to his visitation, but came back to us when we spoke; and that night, the end began. Towards midnight, his mind was more thoroughly, and for a longer time, unhinged. And all through Good Friday, our hearts were darkened by the veil that hid us from his mind. He was communing with God, and his own soul. Step by step, in his "sublime delirium," with burning words of eloquence, he talked to his Parishioners, of their duty in obeying the Church, of the need of more frequent and better attended services; and of the duty to support the services in all their details. His speech was clear, and forcible, and full of strength, all set to his loving tones of earnest, anxious pleading, and in perfect unison with the teaching of his life. As the night waned, he was in his Convention, with all the majesty and power of his eloquence, stirring them, to a maintenance of the great Catholic principles of the Church, against the insidious approaches of the enemy, on grounds of compromise and popular favour. And through that long and bitter day of the Passion, utterly uncontrolled by reason, and yet so perfectly himself, he was on his visitation, and wanting to get home. But when exhausting struggles stretched

It was his last note; a type of his life-long love, and sympathy.

his weakness on the bed, he was with his class in Theology, dividing those blessed texts, of unity, and God's love, and Jesu's prayers and promises, in the last chapters of St. John's Gospel, often with a directness and force of argument, that sanity could not have improved. That delirium was a most amazing thing. It was God's own witness to the single-mindedness, the absorption in duty, the devotion to holy works, of his long life. There was no reason to control, there was no thought of approbation, there was no room for any motive whatsoever; but the burning, glowing, glorious, God-like thoughts, that had been born, and grown, and lived ever, in his brain, let loose, with no directing hand, poured out a torrent of earnest, kindling eloquence, and his soul uttered itself, before God. In it, all concealments of policy, or propriety, or hesitation, were removed: and his soul, and heart, and mind lay open, and there was nothing there, but love of God, devotion to the Church, anxiety for souls. *"Delirium ensued; a noble, generous delirium, in which the mind was not so much unhinged, as unveiled; in which the great pastoral heart, that had throbbed so long for the Diocese of New Jersey, and the Parish of St. Mary's, for St. Mary's Hall, and for Burlington College, poured itself out, without measure and without restraint: in which the Christian warrior fought his battles over again, in appeals, in remonstrances, in prayers, in words of burning eloquence and sententious pith. It looked as if reason had resigned the chair for a season, merely that it might be seen how noble and well ordered those faculties were, over which it ordinarily presided." There could not be higher testimony to the power of his mind, the unselfishness of his heart, the purity of his soul. And with the blessed Easter Even, rest came to him; the calm, still, quiet, childlike sleep that brought, on Easter day, such dreams of hope to all our hearts. As the night drew on he said to his most faithful, loving servant, "This is Easter-Eve, I should have been at St. Barnabas, tonight." And so the Easter light grew brighter, hopefully to the watchers, peacefully for him. But he was not a sharer in our hope. From the beginning, God seemed to have revealed to him the promise of rest. And he lay down content, thankful, as though he would not break the peace that gathered on his soul, by any effort to be well. Our selfish entreaties were in vain. "I cannot create a will," he said to his physician, only not his son in all love and devoted tenderness," if I had one, I would use it, but I cannot create a will." When one of his physicians asked him what was his prevailing feeling, he

The Rev. Dr. Mahan.

His visitation appointment, for Easter Eve was at Barnabas Chapel, Bur lington.