LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 704 017 7 Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-1955 ^ E 513 .5 59th Copy 1 I t ^pakinj pja^. A DISCOURSE -*«5®68l OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH aotii iiEoi»4E:wr, -m. v. m:.. DELIVEKED AT BILLERICA, MAS8., Jxxly 31st, 1804. BY REV. JOHN D. SWEET Pastor of the Baptist Church. '^ AH-" '9"^ " Tongues of the Dead, not lost, But speaking still from Death's frost, Like tiery tongues at Pentecost." " As the Saviour's blood was shed to save sinners, so may mine in part ior my country." EuwD. A. Adams. PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. BOSTON: COMMEItriAL PRINTING HOUSE, .36 KILBY STREET. 1864. ^t ^pafeiiij frab. A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF ttf't. §iwMi %mm Slamis, SOth REOIIMCEI^'T, »I . V. >1 . , DELIVERED AT BILLErtlCA, MASS., J uily 31»t, 180-1. BY REV. JOHN D. SWEET, Pastor of the Baptist Church. " Tongues of the Dead, not lost, But speaking still from Death's frost, Like tiery tongues at Pentecost." ' As the Saviour's blood was shed to save sinners, so may mine in part for my country." £dwo. a. Adams. PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. BOSTON: COMMEECIAL PRINTING HOUSE, 36 KILBY STREET. 1864. .5 ifdiatiflttv TO THE MEMORY OF THE HEROIC MARTYRS TO GOD AND LIBERTY, WHO, AS ITS SAVIOURS, HAVE MADE OBLATION OF THEIR LIFE'S BLOOD UPON THE ALTAR OF THEIR COUNTRY, THIS DISCOURSE IS INSCRIBED. FOR SUCH OF OUR SOLDIERS AS SHALL SCAN THESE PAGES MAY THE "SPEAKING DEAD" have a voice; MAY god's BANNER OVER THEM BE LOVE; MAY HE BE THEIR SHIELD AND BUCKLER IN THE DAY OF BATTLE, AND AT LAST GRANT THEM AN TO AN EVERLASTING HOME IN THE SKIES. jjsakiug f BE^. HEB. xl. 4. "HE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH." Then they whom we call dead have voices for us ! Such had Abel he whose soul clad in its vestment of liaht first stooped, solitary and alone, before the throne of God, sole representative of the Redeemed Church. And so of all the " sleeping dead, none are mute, none tongueless or speechless. The sealed lips of mortality to be sure shall no more be heard on the shores ot time, but yet the dead speak to u. by the lives which they have lived. Departing they leave '• Footprints on the sands of Time," — a harvest of weal or woe to be gathered by the successive gen- erations. , ,, ^ ,^ Not many weeks ago we laid in its narrow house, the cold clay casket of a lovely maiden ; a little later we observed the funeral rites of a Mother, fallen in the strife of life ; still more recently we gathered in the sanctuary to take a final eave ot all that was mortal of one whose young life had been yielded up in his country's service ; the quick expanding perennial blade has not "decked the hallowed mould" since we fol owed to the grave the crumbling clay tabernacle of an aged Mother in Israel; nor have five suns set, since we stood around the bier of one whose earthly sun had been obscured in the meridian ot life's little day. Of all these it may be said, " being- dead they yet speaky Like echoes amid the gorges of stupendous moun- tains their voices shall forever sound down the corridors of time, and like the immortal, the nobler part, which has gone hence, these voices were not born to die, but to speak on, on amid eternity^ s ceaseless round of eras and cycles. And now, once more, wherefore are we here assembled? "Why this large assemblage, this presence of fellow-citizens without distinction, of the honorable Trustees,* teachers and pupils of the Howe High School, of war worn soldiers, rem- nants of war-shattered regiments, or representatives, perhaps, of the immortal 59th ? Why this sombre black, whose drapery of woe meets our vision, for the moment dimming the lustre which beams from the stars of our flag ? Wherefore all these ? They, too, all have " speaking voices,'^ which together with the tears that course down these cheeks, these habiliments of grief, and the silence that reigns around, in language; which is un- mistakable, inform me that once again we are in the house of mourning. • My friends, as we assemble here to-day we are reminded that we are not the only mourners for departed worth and blighted joy in this land of ours. Through the length and breadth of Columbia there this day ascends from ten-thousands of homes ,the wail of the widow and the orphan, the childless and the brotherless. " Tliere is no fireside howso'cr dcfendcfl, But haes one vacantj chair." " The air is full of farewells for the dying And mournings for the dead, The heart of Rachel for her children weeping, Will not be comforted." Not as yet can it be said as once of the subjects of a hardened king, — " There was not a house where there was not one * Dea. Amos Spaulding, Col. John Baldwin, Marshall Preston, Esq., Dca. James R. Faulkner, Geo. H. Whitman, Esq., Dudley Foster, Esq., Wm. H. Odiorne, Esq. f By absencp or death. dead," * — but surely it may safely be averred there is not a household exempt from the universal lamentation which ascends from a grief-stricken people. Prior to the consideration of our text a succinct sketch of the quickly-run and abruptly-terminated course of Sergeant Adams, that consideration to be succeeded by an enforcement from his life and character of the sentiments of our theme. I. A brief narrative of the life of the subject of our esti- mation. II. A review of our text. III. An application and enforcement from the life and char- acter of our subject. I. Edward Amos Adams was the son of Amos Adams, Esq., of Westford, Mass., and Susan Dodge, of Charlestown, Mass. He was born at Billerica, Nov. 25, 1839. In early childhood he was left without a father, and the tender thought was reared under the affectionate tuition of a devoted mother. At the early age of twelve he entered the Howe High School, where he remained about four years. His course here was marked by great diligence. With zeal he received the means of knowledge and improvement afforded him, and used as not abusing them, and graduated with high honors. He subse- quently sailed upon two voyages to sea,f twice visiting our antipodes ; and for several terms taught in the schools of his native town. At the age of twenty-two he became a subject of Divine Grace in regeneration, made a public profession of re- ligion by baptism into Christ, and was received into the fellow- ship of the Baptist Church of Billerica. From the commencement of our sad intestine war he ever manifested a lively interest in the national welfare, and upon the call by the Government, Sept. 1863, for 300,000 volunteers, for three years' service, he was the first to enlist from his own town. He connected himself with the 59th Regiment M. V. M., as Sergeant accompanied his command to the seat of war,:|: " went into the fearful charge of the 17th of June," (Battle of Peters- * Ex. xil, .30. t AVith Capt. Ranlett, ship Surprise. t Extract of letter from his brave commanrting offleor, Col. J. K. F. Gould , since deceased in couscquence of wounds received in battle. burg,) and here received a wound from the effects of which, in conjunction with disease, he rapidly sunk awaj'-, and June 27, 1864, at City Point Hospital, Va., fell asleep in Jesus. Thus set the sun of Edward A. Adams, with full day efful- gence. His spirit, like a long imprisoned bird, has winged its way to the God who gave it. His body sleeps soundly beneath the Southern sod to-day. " Though trumpet may sound and loud cannon rattle, He heeds not, he hears not, lie's free from all pain, He sleeps his last sleep, he's fought his last battle. No sound can awake him to glory again." No, my friends, not to the fleeting empty glory of this nether sphere, but amid the celestial glories of the upper firmament, we doubt not that the disenthralled spirit shines, one more star in that bright and innumerable constellation, which reflects the brightness and glory of the fountain of uncreated light. Aye, and though the earthly tabernacle has been removed from its place among us, yet in the thoughts and deeds of by-gone days, Edward " still lives." " HE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH." H. Now let us divert our minds a little from the subject of our solemn regard and tribute, to that which is wrapped up in our text, and as an embryo of fertile and useful and solemnly important truths let us unfold it. (1) Death. (2) The Speech op the Dead. (1st.) Death ! My hearers, it should not be a painful thing for us at times to contemplate, and take some serious thought, of that Messenger who so soon, at the farthest, will summon us hence. It were for our advantage often to look into our own graves, that thereby, to take off the terror of them, we might be led to gaze into the tomb where our Lord lay and learn the price of our ransom from its jaws. Not that we should so dwell upon death as through "fear" of it to be "all our lifetime sub- ject to bondage,"* but give the subject that wholesome thought which shall make us both better and wiser men. We speak now not of a second death, the inevitable retribu- tion of those who receive not the merit of Christ's efficacious atonement by faith, but of the first, to the wicked indeed but the sad precursor of the second, to the Christian like the angel to Peter, breaking open the prison door and leading forth to the light and liberty of eternal day. It should not be an unprofitable inquiry for any one of us, — What is death ? It is the middle point between two lives ; a probationary and a retributive existence, both lives but infi- nitely unlike, since one is mortal, the other immortal ; one dying, the other undying ; one (to the Christian) a foretaste, the other fruition. For all our inquiries as rational creatures, we have one safe referee, one faithful arbiter, this Holy Volume, " It is the judge that ends the strife, When wit and reason fail." With reference to the subject under consideration let us make it the " man of our counsel." Death is represented in the Heavenly Oracle under various emblems, which severally portray its character. At one time we hear it described as a sleep^ to express how calm and tranquil its repose, from which there is a joyful waking, for though "weeping may endure" for the brief night of earth, "joy cometh in the morning" of the resurrection. Anon the Psalmist of Israel represents death under a sterner and more forbidding aspect, depicted as the desolating floodX, over- whelming and irresistible, likened to the mower's scythe% lev- elling all ranks irrespectively like the grass which is cut down by the unthinking swain. " There is a Reaper, whose name is Death, And with his sickle keen He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that grow between." * Heb. ii, 15. f John, xi, 11. t J Psalms, Ix, 5, 6. Again we find the "Royal Promise pleader" portraying death as a shadoiv* so like an unsubstantial dream as compared with the substance which his prophetic vision descried sliould be van- quished by death's great Abolisher who took away death's sting by allowing it to be sheathed in His own body.f The "Valley of the shadow," a vale of tears and darkness to be sure, but quickly bounded and conducting to Mount Zion and the City of the living God. Such are a few from many of the similitudes under which Death is represented. Involved and obscured in his robes of darkness, he seems grim indeed, but divest, denude him of his mask, (which the Grace of God alone can do for us,) and that monster of darkness stands forth an angel of light, to conduct to realms of eternal day. My hearers, there are many things which it is profitable for us to learn here upon earth, but I think I may safely aflirm there is no knowledge which we can with as little safety neglect as this, 1st. That ive must all die I 2d. That we may die soon ! We must all die ! How momentous a thought I And yet men trifle with life as if it were a coil of infinite length which could never be shuffled off. We must all die. We are Ijorn to die. Man's life has been compared to a book, his birth the title-page, his death the finis which closes up all. Therefore the volume of our life may be a mere romance or a solemn reality ; it may be fairer or plainer bound ; it may be longer or shorter ; but at the last finis, death comes in and closes up all, for it is the end of all. Yes, when our "determined days, numbered months, appohited bounds which we cannot pass"^: are all completed, we must all die! There is no " exemption,''' no " commutation clause'' for us here to avail ourselves of; " there is no discharge in this war." § We must all die ! The decree has gone forth "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," || * Psalm xxili, 4. t " Death stung himself to death when he stung Christ."— i?c>n)at«e. |.Jobxiv,5. $ Eccl. viii, 8. || Gen, iii, 19. 9 and it is a decree which has been executed npon all the myriads of mankind who. have walked the earth since the pristine inno- cency of paradise, with two exceptions only, the translated ones, all have tasted death. Under this sad covenant all ages -and conditions are comprehended. The Destroyer poisons and disappoints earth's brightest hopes. What rite regarded as prefiguring so much of happi- ness here below as the marriage-service ? And yet mark its winding up, how death creeps in even here ! — "To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, — till death do us part P\ So he alway: comes in at the last. As nature's day is succeeded by its night, so the span of life's little day by the shadow of death's dusk. And not .only upon all conditions but upon the cold bosom of all ages death lays his leaden sceptre. Old age withers before its palsying stroke. I read of one Guerricus, who was humbled to the foot of the cross at reading this announcement : "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died; and all the days of Methuselah* were nine hundred and sixty and nine years, and he diedJ^j And so of Seth and Enos and Jared and others. Neither does the relentless Visitant spare the strong man in the meridian of his days and strength, nor yet the " Young and strong who cherished Noble longings for the strife ;" like grapes plucked before fully ripe. No, my friends, for if youth or vigor, nobleness or virtue had been a shield or defence from the death-darts of the foe, we had not gathered here to-day, to honor the memory of the brave and the true. And relative to our dissolution, there is secondly this solemn thought, We may die soon ! No man knows the hour or day of his death, not more than * Methuselah signifies " he dies.'" " The longest liver that ever was, carried death in his name, that he might be reminded of its coming surely, though it came slowly."— H#nrj/. tGen. 5. 10 he is informed of that wherein the "Son of Man cometh.'* AHke the Master and his messenger shall appear in an hour that we think not of, and as a thief in the night. Of all the generations of men, we have on record only three individuals the exact time of whose death was ever foretold : — Hezekiah* fifteen years : Hannaniahf one year ; the rich fool| one day. My friends, at every swing of the pendulum a spirit is ushered into eternity ! Our turn may come next ; at the furthest it will be very very soon ! What then should be our conduct with such enlightenment ? " Turn to God one day before your death," said Rabbi Eliezer to his disciples. " But how can a man," replied they, " know the day of his death ?" " True," said Eliezer, " therefore you should turn to God todai/ ; perhaps you may die to-morrow." We should therefore live each day and hour as though the announcement of the Lord to King Hezekiah were ringing in our ears : — " Set thine house in order ; for thou shalt die and not live."§ But oh how grievous the apathy which distinguishes us all in view of life's uncertainties. We live as if, like Adam and Abel, we had never seen a person die, and as though the destroyer of mortal felicities were an unknown visitant, whereas he stalks among us with a high hand, and our vacant seats, the slabs of yonder cemeteries, ri\ ailing in their coldness and whiteness the forms that sleep beneath, the long train of bereaved hearthstones rendered desolate by the enginery of destructive war, and the scene before us to-day, should each be to us preachers of mortality, reminding us that our turn may come next. And hence the necessity of having the " loins girded about, and the lights burning." " Every night brings us nearer, nearer, and every departing sun Bids us take heart and labour, for soon will our work be done." But, my hearers, though we must all die, and tliough toe may die soon, there is one for whom this knowledge has no terrors. Whom we mean is obvious. What is death to the Believer ? As a desolating flood, or a valley deep and dark, hath it terrors for him ? Ah, no ; to the wicked the day of death may be ♦Isaiah, 38. f Jer. xxviii, 16, 17. | Luke, xi. 20. ij ? Kings, xx, 1. 11 dark, but to the Christian it is a bright day, inlinitely brighter than tlie day of his birth. As the cloud which had a dark side for the Egyptians had a bright side for the Israelites, so death which lowers ominously upon the wicked for the good hath nothing but bright beams, or a dark night before a brighter and everlasting to-morrow. As we liave before intimated, the flower of the morning is not more fading or the rainbow of the evening more transitory, than is the narrow handbreadth, the little span of the "tale-told," our lives. But this, so far from being fraught with alarm to the Clu'istian, is the great stay of his hope and the corner-stone of his building, that his '* rest is not here ;" that here he is but a "stranger, a pilgrim and a sojourner," having no "continuing city," but hastening to a "better coimtry, that is a Heavenly ;" that this mortal tenement is but a " prison house whose cribs and bars confine the soul,"* like the movable tents of- Patri- archal life, in which the undying, the nobler part, is but a ^' guest," a lodger for the brief night of earth ; the " lengthened cords" and " strengthened stakes" of the tabernacle state once removed, and like an unfettered slave the winged soul flies to the light of perpetual day and liberty unrestrained at God's right hand. So death is the messenger of peace to the believer, and the day of his death is the day of his joy. We remember the inquiry of Paul, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?"t The response is to be found in the believer's gain, since for him the death of the body quite destroys the body of death. There is another view of our text upon which we must descant for a moment, and for a moment only it need be, since already we have anticipated its instructions. " He being dead yet speaketh^ "The Speaking Dead !" Who does not love to regard our dead as still, in their now and infinitely extended spheres of action, exerting influences which like themselves can never * Rev. John F. Bigelow. t Romans, vli, •J4. die ! But while the dead to us, but the aUve to Christ, in their state of everlasting cessation from tlie restless vicissitudes of life have eternal voices, for us who a little longer tarry here below, how do they speak, and what do they say ? We read of a rich man speaking from his place of torment, and we remember his language ; but what is the burden of their speech who inhabit the regions of the blest ? Ah ! my friends, for you or for me it is not to penetrate that vail. The Revelator in his Patmos vision, through the door "ajar upon its golden hinges," caught some faint glimpse of the glory within and some faint whisper of the ceaseless anthem. But in our cases, " Ear hath not heard, nor eye hath seen, Its swelling songs, or its changeless sheen," so as to reveal those " secret things which belong to God." The speech, then, of the " speaking dead" which we would have you hear and heed this hour, comes not down from the heavens, neither does it come up from the grave, "for there is no work nor device, nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave."* It is the voice which speaks from a life and character that still moves and acts among us. It is a gratifying but an overwhelming reflection that man has two immortalities ; the one he lives yonder, the other he leaves behind him ; so that no word spoken by human lips can ever be unspoken, no deed done can ever be undone, no thought can ever be unthought ; they shall ever exert a power for weal or woe, till time shall be no more. One of America's greatest sons upon his death-bed said, as his last mortal words, " I still live." He spoke of the breath which was in his nostrils. We lay greater stress upon his last earthly utterance, and what he said of himself as a mortal man, we say of him in the various media whereby he still lives and " speaketh," and forever shall for good or for evil among the generations of men. There is a little verse, " Kind words can never die." * Eccl. U, 10. We should be solemnly impressed with the reflection that what is so true of the "kind" and good is equally true of the evil— neither can " ever die." So, then, when we die let us remember that the lives we have lived' cannot die with us ; they shall ever live on, on, a blessing or a curse. " He who is not for me is against me." We cannot die neutral. " HE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH." And of him shall this be said whose memory we assemble this day to honor ? Oh, yes, the dust which sleeps where the missiles of war and the shafts of disease have hurried it beneath the Southern sod, has no voice for us indeed, but the unloosed tongue of the spirit speaketh this hour amid the realms of the glorified, while the character of our brother still walks the world in the power of its influence. I have now done with my text, and I have another text yet to preach upon, supplied me in the life and character of him whose obsequies we have assembled, irrespective of all denomi- national distinctions, to observe. We have addressed you con- cerning death ; permit me now with a better compendium to speak a few words concerning the living; for such are the ''sleeping dead.'' We come not to speak the panegyric of sergeant Adams, for his life is his best eulogy, and we would refrain from adding affliction to the afflicted by tearing open afresh the wounds of bleeding hearts. How shall we here portray before you the life and character of the Patriot Hero and the Christian Martyr, for such we characterize those who die the Christian's death in the service of their country ! Shall we represent before you his extraction or genealogy ? These were indeed honorable, but by what the virtues of others pur- chased the dead do not speak, neither shall we choose to declare other minor points, but in a fourfold capacity we shall note that which is worthy of imitation in us all. Consider the SON, SCHOLAR, rATRIOT AND CHRISTIAN. The Son. To the youth before us we especially commend 14 this consideration. Tlie childhood and youth of Edward Adams were formed under the influences of a Christian home. It could be said of him as of one of old, " he was his Father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of his Mother."* But more may be added to this of his own love and regard for the Parents of his youth, or Parent we should say, for as we have before stated the Father died while Edward was very young. In the opportunity which has been accorded me to examine the writings of the deceased I have made some selections. Under date of Aug. 25, 1859, I find '* Rules for Action f and among them is this one: — " I will listen to the counsels of my friends, especially of my Mother, whose pure love, a Mother's love, must ever desire my true good." This is the key note to the char- acter of the man, for he who loves and respects his Mother obeys a Divine commandf and is generallp on the Lord's side. Again Feb. 22d, 1864, from his journal, six months since, by which we learn that his was an affection and devotion which manhood did not, as is too often the case, extinguish : — " I do not half value my good mother, or what she has done for me." And still more recently. May 25, from Fredericksburg, Va., while visiting the grave of Washington's Mother : — "I viewed with veneration the resting place of this worthy woman, and wished I could be as good a son to you as hers to lierT But if his words much more his life, (for this ever has a voice much the more potent of the two,) expresses special regard for parental teachings and requirements, a freedom from everything like death, a spirit which forgot as well as forgave, and equally sought pardon for every, even the slightest wrong, an affection which was manly while it was dutiful, such were some of the characteristics of the son. A Mother's grief should be assuaged at this remembrance, and that the departed has gone to his home in the skies, and numbers one of the household of Christ. The younger Brother gone to the Elder, the son to the Father's house. So therefore as a may be able to obtain some other situation in which to serve his coun- try. He best serves her by his death, for not a drop of blood fallen upon the bosom of her soil in this great contest, but that hath a voice which appeals to the universal heart of man. It shall spring up and bear fruit an hundred fold to the glory of God and the general good of the human race. So, then, as a Patriot, '■'■He being' dead ijet speaketh" " How sleep the brave who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest. By forms unseen their dirge is sung, By fairy hands their knell is rung; Tnere honor comes, a pilgrim grey, To de:k the shrine that wraps their clay ; And honor doth awhile repair, To mourn a weeping hermit there." The Christian. What sermons could not comprehend or volumes compass, we express when we say Edward A. Adams was a Christian. "Religion is the top-stone of ■ the completed edifice."* We have previously announced that upon his 24th birthday he enlisted in the service of his country. Upon his 22d, by public profession, he enlisted under the blood-stained banner of Prince Immanuel. In the one he acknowledged his Saviour, in the other he laid himself a saviour upon the altar of his country. " On my 22d birthday," he writes in his journal, " I was *Ke,. C. W. Anable. 19 baptized ;* for this I thank the Saviour of men, who has had mercy upon me, and whom I desire to keep me in the way of truth and life." What his life has been since his personal dedi- cation you full well know. He has not "appeared empty before the Lord ;" has ever brought those sacrifices which are not despised of God, "a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart." His have not been great achievements to dazzle in the eyes of the world, but the quiet, unobtrusive inner walk, which equally bespeaks the indwelling presence of the Holy Comforter. The key-note to his Christian character we find in his memo- randum written of a friend : " Jan. 18, 1864.— We finally talked of religion. He does not think Christ a Redeemer. I told him I did:' A fitting response, to that inquiry of our Lord, "What think ye of Christ?! "And this view of Christ as formed in his heart the hope of glory, we find often expressed in his Diary by prayers in the name of Christ for "pre-eminence in virtue and the Divine image ;" frequently he implores "pardon for all his sins ;" frequently, as recorded Nov. 28, 1863, we learn of his rising before the break of day and going forth to some secluded place to pray for "wisdom, knowledge and blessing." His piety finds exhibition in his reverence for all the righteous commands of God :— "Dec. 15, 1863, Sunday. I desire to keep this day ; if we do not keep the Lord's-day he will not keep us." Another evidence of the hope within him was his love for the Sabbath School. Many of us doubtless recall those words which were among the last to his fellow-pupils in the Sabbath School : "Would you live long and well ? honor thy Father and thy Mother; but we hold a similar relation of obedience to the Divine Parent. In obeying the one we are learning to obey the other, and if we yield a ready obedience to earthly parents the more' so shall we to that Heavenly Parent, when we feel sub- mission to Himi to be our reasonable service." His piety was characterized by obedience to that covenant obligation which reads, "We will not forsake the assembling of ourselves together." He was true to this sacred contract. The abundance of Grace in his heart bespoke itself thus at one of the last social religious meetings which he attended: " I may be tempted like Peter to deny our Lord, from which * By Rev. T. C Russell. t Matthew xxil, 42. 20 may I be saved. I feel grounded in the hope of the Gospel, and am sure of my hope of eternal life, and am persuaded that neitlier death nor life, &c. &c."* His language at one of the Union meetings in yonder house is worthy of remembrance. He invited all to enlist as "Soldiers of the Cross," adding, "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." And did my Brother carry this noble spirit away with him ? Was he so "rooted and grounded" in the faith as to "endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ ?"t Too many we know forget to carry their religion with them into life's highest and lowest and life's universal places. Was it so with Sergeant Adams? Let us see. Shortly aftei' his departure from home I hear of him as addressing the deaf and dumb at their institu- tion and pointing them to Jesus : — "Were the Saviour of men now before you personally, you would ask Him to heal you, but though this cannot be you may all obtain from Him a greater gift, even eternal life, given to all who believe." A little later at the afternoon Union Meeting at the Meionian, Boston: "I am a soldier of the United States Army, and esteem it a great honor. I am also a soldier of the Army of the Lord, which I esteem a much greater honor." Again I am apprised of him in camp addressing the intemperate of his reg- iment ; and still later, while on tlie march, the profligate and profane. And finally, from the front he writes : "I desire to preserve my integrity among these men and set them an exam- ple of good behavior." And did his desire prove father to the deed ? Let the following speak for itself. In a letter from Hospital 9th Corps, City Point, Ya., written by Rev. J. I. Smith, of the noble Christian Commission, is em- braced this testimony, comforting to a Mother's heart, precious to us all. "I inquired his state of preparation for Heaven ; to this he uniformly answered hopefully, comfortably and peace- fully towards the last. * * * * The reputation of your son was unblemished alike as a soldier and a companion. Members of his regiment speak of him as a favorite." My * Koraans viii, 38. t 2 Timothy, ii, 3. 21 friends, shall we not bless God for such an endorsement ; shall we not praise His Holy name for the men after His own heart, who are stationed amid the scene;- of our national strife to smooth and tranquillize the last hours of our good and brave ! Thus Edward Amos Adams lived the Christian's life and died the Christian's death. The Mother has lost a true and noble son, the seminary of learning one of its brightest lights, the country one of its truest patriots ; but these losses are all ex- ceeded in that the world has lost, what it least can spare, a Christian ! * We have now done with the second text of our discourse, the sleeping but the '■'■speaking' deadr He lived as we all should live ; he died as I fain would die, even the death of the righteous, in his country's service. His life was short as the world esti- mates life, but if that life is longest which best answers life's great end, then Sergeant Adams died, if not full of "days" at least of "riches and honor." And gracious the assurance that he "still lives" in the thoughts and deeds of bygone days, "still speaks" through the media of a pure life, like the setting sun leaves a trail of light and glory behind, to illuminate other heavenward bound pilgrims on their ^upward course. The pure and good, my hearers, are not ot any age ; they live in our memories and "their works do follow them." Hence we need bring no precious spices to embalm our dead in Christ, for their image is enshrined in the choicest recesses of the heart's affections. Let us be humbly thankful at this time that though our Brother died in a land of strangers, he fell asleep in the ever- lasting arms of a "Friend that sticketh closer than a brother," and had for his pillow the bosom of a reconciled God. The silver cord has indeed been loosed, and the golden bowl broken , the pitcher broken at the fountain and the wheel at the cistern, * In a small diary taken from the pocket of Sergeant Adams after his decease, and re- ceived since thi's Discourse entered the press, are found these cheering testimonies : " May 4, 1864. 1 desire strength to carry what I have, htit wish to keep mij Bible, if nothing ehc!" "Asked them how they knew I was a professed Christian? By mij behaviour. This pleased me, and I desire 1o merit the appellation in truth and deed." 22 but oh how glad and elevating the thought that from these broken aqueducts and cisterns, a disenthralled soul has been transported to the inexhaustible fountain of being and benefi- cence, forever to "drink of the rivers of God's pleasures," where all that was wanting in fuller glory is now made up. " Nobly thy course is run, Splendor is round it ; Bravely tliy fight is won, Martyrdom crowned it." Bereaved hearts, at such a time as this I turn to you. As we have before said, you are not the only mourners in this land, aye, in this community of ours. From our different pul- pits have been paid the last fond tributes to the memory of the two Gilmans, a Patten, a Hannaford, the victims of our sad war ; and others, former students of the Howe School or resi- dents of our town, and in some cases members of our churches, Hutchins, Farwell, Plympton, Sanborn, Sumner, Parker, Col- lins, Morrissey,* sleep in the soldier's grave. But, mourning friends, we know full well that while sym- pathisers and sharers in your grief, other aching hearts cannot fill the vacuum in your own, for each heart alone "knows its own bitterness." But when Mary and Martha went to weep over the grave of their brother, we remember that Jesus repaired there also, and we are told that He who always loved to follow in the footsteps of sorrow and heal the broken hearted, He veiled the majesty of the Godhead in the tenderness of the friend ; He was a weeping man by the grave of Lazarus ! Jesus wept ! A better precedent we cannot have, and so we come to "weep with you who weep," to mourn with you who mourn, but we come above all to seek that Grace which shall enable you to weep as though you wept not, and to mourn as though you mourned not, because that to each one of us "the time is short and the fashion of this world passeth away." * The last three enlisted at the same time, and in the same Regiment, with Edward Adams. The heavy tidings of their death were received upon the day succeeding that upon which this sermon was preached- Of the 59th Regiment which left the State six months since, there are, after tliis sliort campaign, but one hundred efficient men remauiing. So fearful arc the ravajjes of our sad war. 23 And as we have a precedent for our condolence, you stricken Mother have one for your grief, and most blessed of all, Jesus figures in them both. We refer to a scene eighteen centuries ago, hard by the gate of the city of Nain. A train of anguished hearts is emerging thence ; the chief mourner is a mother ; the dead her son. There is a remarkable coincidence between that case and your own. Like your's, the dead was a young man^ the desire of her eyes seized in his flower and bloom. Like your's he was an only son ; all her heart-strings had entwined around his ; he was the earth-idol which had filled a large niche in her heart's temple. To complete the affliction the bereaved Mother, like yourself, was a Widoiv, like yourself had no hus- band to say to her as Elkanah to Hannah : — "Why is thy heart grieved ? Am not I better to thee than ten sons ?"* And we are told that Jesus had compassiomupon the widow and the childless ; and He who came to mitigate earth's sorrows counselled her to "weep not." That commisseration, that counsel. He this hour extends to you ; He to whom the re- deemed soul of the gone before by virtue of the betrothment of a by-past eternity is now wedded ; "He thy Maker and thy Husband, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel."! Dear friends, your sorrow cannot be prevented, but it can be alleviated and improved. To this end we assume that preroga- tive bequeathed by Christ's herald as a peculiar legacy to the Christian, and bid you "behold the Lamb of Godf which taketh away the sin" and not only so but the '■'■sorrow of the world !" Why should you weep for him from whose eyes all tears are wiped ? Why should you bemoan family ties sundered when the departed has but a little preceded you to the only family which cannot be divided ? Why lament the Christian and Patriot Martyr when from the din and smoke of battle he has gone to that realm where, as in the upper, the third region of the air, there are said to be no clouds nor storms, no thunder- ings nor lightnings, so on that brighter shore there is no sin, * 1 Samuel i, 8. t Isaiah 54, 5. J John i, -,'0. 24 there are no troubles, "no death, neither sorrow nor crying nor any more pain." ■ Oh all ye whose hearts have been made desolate by war's devastations, look up from your weeds and ashes, for though you have lost your earthly all you have not lost your God, and He gives thee this as the eternal pledge of His immutable friendship : — " I will never leave thee nor forsake thee !"* Those earthly clods that now heed not the footsteps and are unmoved by the tears of mourning hearts shall yet be delivered from their sepulchral slumbers fashioned like unto the glorious body of their risen Redeemer. Centuries or ages may write with mossy and mildewed fingers their ancient story on their obelisks, the march of Time's relentless armies eradicate and expunge all indications of their resting-place, mouldering decay crumble the fearfully and -vj/^onderfully made earthly house back to its Mother's bosom, yet by the pledge given thee from the open portals of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, these mortal frames, decomposed into their original elements, shall yet start remod- elled and reconstructed from their precious, because redeemed, ashes. They whose ears are now deaf to the bugle's blast at the trump of the archangel shall mount to the sacramental armies of the skies. You too, the church of which our departed Brother was a faithful member, lament another breach in your walls, another "lively stone" torn from the spiritual house of earth. But as you have cause far your grief, so, too, you have an example, for so did the Patriarchal church lament Aaron and Samuel, and the primitive, Stephen. And like tliem you mourn not as those without hope, for the death of our Christian Brother has been but a transfer from earth's wdlderness to the Heavenly Gar- den, from the church militant to the Church Triumphant. In such an hour as the present there is this reflection, which should bring especial consolation, that though in nature there is often a cloud ivithont a bow, in grace this is never the case. So that when "He cometli with clouds" of sorrow and adversity, the "token of the covenant" between the "Faithful Promiser" * Hebrews xiii, 5. 25 and his servants of old, for the Christian has an infinitely en larged significance. "And it shall come to pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen i)i the cloud."* Oh may we all, Mother, a widow and childless, mourning friends, bereaved church, all, in this season of calamity, become the glad recipients of that Grace which shall enable us to look away from our griefs and sorrows to the luminous bow, radiant, lustrous with hope, which spans the "storm-wreathed sky," revealing by its eflTulgence through rifts of the clooids, those bright constella- tions of the departed which gem the firmafiaent of Divine things. Finally. The "speaking dead" has a voice and language for this entire community, especially its i/outh, so largely reprc- resented here and participants in these sad obsequies. Were the now glorified spirit of the departed to put off its vestment of light and return to this its mortal dwelling place, (as incredible as that the beautiful butterfly should relapse to its chrysalis state,) what think ye would l>e the burden of his speech ? I apprehend his voice would be one of warning, and its language, ^'Be ye also readyr'' My friends, let us be taught by tlie example of our Brother and by his death, by the latter how uncertain our lease of life, by the former how to live, since to learn how to die we must first learn how to live. The voices from glory which sound through this temple to-day, the voices from the crowded cities of our dead, the voices from the blood-dyed fields of our coun- try's travail, proclaim how brittle the thread which binds your fragile barque to the shores of time, a breath may sunder it, a glance annihilate. Oh then let the anchor of your hope be safely lodged in the refuge of tlie "High Rock." And thus, linked to the Eternal Throne by the golden chain of covenant love, ye shall be safe, amid all tlie ebbings and flowings of this mortal existence, safe in death, asid &afe at last when the dis- quietudes of earth are forever hushed by the abiding presence of the Eld^n- Brother, the Everlastuig Friend. Tlien amid the choirs of Heaven, and among the sons of men. alike by mortal and immortal tongues, it sliall be told of you, — "re beikc dead yet speaketh." * Cfenesi* ix, H. 2fi O N r H K I) K A Til OF 1 lieur a voice, a f^entle voice, And it comes from an unseen land ; From one who has trod this blood stained earth : Now one of an angel hand. Dnty to God and his Country moved His bi-ave and manly heart ; And girding the soldier's armor on, We sadly saw him depart. " I go to bleed in my Country's cause, As the Saviour for sinners bled ; But in the hearts of the good and brave I still shall live, when dead."* Mid the din of battle his summons came To lay his armor down ; " Well done, thou art faithful," his Captain said ; '• Come and receive thy crown." List now to his voice as it loudly speaks To his comrades in the strife : " Oh, buckle the Christinn's aiinor on, While you fight for freedom and life." Gently he speaks to his mother's heart, With sorrow and anguish riven ; " Weep not for the lost, but evermore lean For thy stay and su])port on Heaven." To all who have known and loved him here His voice conies, urging them on ; Bidding them not lay their armor aside, Till Victory and Heaven are won. Annie. * See Pnge 1' of the Sermon. OBITUARY. BY D . 1) . I! A X L E T T , A . M Died June 27, 1864, inconsequence of" a wound received before Petersburg on June 17, 1864, Sergeant Edward A. Adams, of Co. E, 59th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, aged 24 years and 7 months. Amid the glorious army of martyrs, whose life blood shed for a country struggling in humanity's behalf testifies ever as a cloud of witnesses, to the pure patriotism and self sacrificing heroism of the sons of New England, it is difficult where all so well deserve their Country's praises to single out any for self abnegation, for valor, for true nobleness of soul, for voluntaiy submission to, and patient endurance of the hard- ships and trials of a soldier's life. But in the present instance a widowed mother laments the untimely death of her last born and only child. Those who know her other losses may well express their sym- pathy for her present deep affliction. Those similarly though scarce equally bereft may condole with her in the loss of a son whose strong right arm promised a staff and support to her declining years. When the last call for troops was made, and the old Bay State was earnestly and gallantly striving to raise the quota by voluntary enlistments, the subject of this brief sketch was the first in his native place to enroll his name as a private soldier in his Country's service. He had long meditated the act but had questioned whether duty re- quired him to yield to his Country the claims a widowed mother had upon her only surviving child; once resolved he made haste to acquit himself of his duty. Not content with the bare gift of his name, he was earnest and indefatigable in his subsequent effort to fill the quota of his native town ; and in public meetings there held, as in every town in Massachusetts, his eloquent appeals, cogent reasonings and most persuasive tongue induced one after another of his fellow townsmen to enlist, and the required quota was speedily filled ; — none more zealous, more earnest, more enthusiastic in the good cause than he. 2S Subsequently, and until the departure of his regiment, he gave himself entirely to the labor of recruiting, he addressed many public assemblies in towns and villages adjacent to Boston ; and wherever his persuasive voice was heard its power was acknowledged, his influence felt. His uncompromising loyalty, his brilliant advocacy of the claims the Coiintry had upon her every son, his genial address, his eloquence, but above all his soldier's garb in which he stood forth to urge by example his peers in age to become his comrades on the field, had each their appropriate weight, and his labors were attended with special success. He left the State with his regiment, and with it be has shared the splendid glories and undying honors of this grand, to him brief, cam- paign, thus early in his career has he given the sanction of his blood to his heart felt labors, and Massachusetts, has lost in him a noble and promising son. LItiRrtRY OF CONGRESS 013 704 017 7