of a
demolished slave trade. Livingstone shall have his monument in
regenerated Africa. Peter Cooper has his monument in all the
philanthropies which for the last quarter of a century he encouraged by
his one great practical effort for the education of the common people.
That is a fame worth having. That is a style of immortality for which
any one without degradation may be ambitious. Fill all our cities with
such monuments till the last cripple has his limb straightened, and the
last inebriate learns the luxury of cold water, and the last outcast
comes home to his God, and the last abomination is extirpated, and
"Paradise Lost" has become "Paradise Regained."

But notice, also, that the longest life-path has a terminus. What a
gauntlet to run--the accidents, the epidemics, the ailments of
ninety-two years! It seemed as if this man would live on forever. His
life reached from the administration of George Washington to that of
President Arthur. But the liberal hand is closed, and the beaming eye is
shut, and the world-encompassing heart is still. When he was at my
house, I felt I was entertaining a king. But the king is dead, and we
learn that the largest volume of life has its last chapter, its last
paragraph, and its last word. What are ninety-two years compared with
the years that open the first page of the future? For that let us be
ready. Christ came to reconstruct us for usefulness, happiness, and
heaven.

I know not the minutiae of Peter Cooper's religious opinions. Some men
are worse than their creed, and some are better. The grandest profession
of Jesus Christ is a life devoted to the world's elevation and
betterment. A man may have a membership in all the orthodox Churches in
Christendom, and yet, if he be mean and selfish and careless about the
world's condition, he is no Christian; while, on the other hand, though
he may have many peculiarities of belief, if he live for others more
than for himself, he is Christ-like, and, I think, he must be a
Christian. But let us remember that the greatest philanthropist of the
ages was Jesus Christ, and the greatest charity ever known was that
which gave not its dollars, but its blood, for the purchase of the
world's deliverance. Standing in the shadow of Peter Cooper's death, I
pray God that all the resources of America may be consecrated. We are
coming on to times of prosperity that this country never imagined.
Perhaps here and there a few years of recoil or set-back,