ew hours ago was radiant with thought and love? 'He is not here:
he is risen.' That power which we knew,--that soaring intelligence,
that soul of fire, that ever-advancing spirit,--_that_ cannot have
been suddenly annihilated with the decay of these earthly organs. It
has left its darkened dust behind. It has outsoared the shadow of
our night. God does not trifle with his creatures by bringing to
nothing the ripe fruit of the ages by the lesion of a cerebral cell,
or some bodily tissue. Life does not die, but matter dies off from
it. The highest energy we know, the soul of man, the unit in which
meet intelligence, imagination, memory, hope, love, purpose,
insight,--this agent of immense resource and boundless power,--this
has not been subdued by its instrument. When we think of such an one
as he, we can only think of life, never of death.
"Such was his own faith, as expressed in his paper on 'Immortality.'
But he himself was the best argument for immortality. Like the
greatest thinkers, he did not rely on logical proof, but on the
higher evidence of universal instincts,--the vast streams of belief
which flow through human thought like currents in the ocean; those
shoreless rivers which forever roll along their paths in the
Atlantic and Pacific, not restrained by banks, but guided by the
revolutions of the globe and the attractions of the sun."
* * * * *
"Let us then ponder his words:--
'Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunsets show?
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned,
Saying, _What is excellent
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Hearts' love will meet thee again._
* * * *
House and tenant go to ground
Lost in God, in Godhead found.'"
After the above address a feeling prayer was offered by Rev. Howard M.
Brown, of Brookline, and the benediction closed the exercises in the
church. Immediately before the benediction, Mr. Alcott recited the
following sonnet, which he had written for the occasion:---
"His harp is silent: shall successors rise,
Touching with venturous hand the trembling string,
Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise,
And wake to e
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