aches us to utter to those who are
in any trouble, so the _office_ of a true comforter requires other
qualifications than mere natural tenderness of heart, or even the
experience of suffering. One must know how to _interpret_ as well as how
to _feel_ sorrow; must know its _lessons_ as well as its _smart_. Hence
it is that God makes His comforters by processes of His own; by hard
masters ofttimes, and by lessons not to be found in books.

It is in illustration of this truth that I bring to you to-day some
memorials of the experience, character, and life-work of one widely
known, deeply beloved, and greatly honored by God as an instrument of
Christian instruction and of Christian comfort. It would, indeed, be
possible to strike some other keynote. A character presenting so many
points of interest might be studied from more than one of those points
with both pleasure and profit; but, on the whole, it seems to me that
the thought of a _Christian comforter_ best concentrates the lessons of
her life, and best represents her mission to society; so that we might
aptly choose for our motto those beautiful words of the Apostle:
"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our
tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any
trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."

In endeavoring to depict a life which was largely shaped by sorrow, I am
not going to open the record of a sorrowful life, but rather of a joyful
one; not of a starved and meager life, but of a very rich one, both in
itself and in its fruits; yet it may be profitable for us to see through
what kind of discipline that life became so rich, and to strike some
of the springs where arose the waters which refreshed so many of the
children of pain and care.

The daughter of Edward Payson might justly have appropriated her
father's words: "Thanks to the fervent, effectual prayers of my
righteous parents, and the tender mercies of my God upon me, I have
reason to hope that the pious wishes breathed over my infant head are in
some measure fulfilled." She might have said with Cowper:

"My boast is not that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned and rulers of the earth;
But higher far my proud pretensions rise;
The child of parents passed into the skies."

The life and work of that devoted minister of Jesus Christ have passed
into the