/ Glass. Book. EL 1 7 7 LSfe / EULOGY /3- / ON THE HONORABLE, JOHN QUllCf 4DIM8, DELIVERED MARCH 24, 1848, AT THE REQUEST OF THE STUDENTS OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE. BY NATHAN LORD, D. D. s president. HAJSTOVER : PRINTED AT THE DARTMOUTH PRESS. 1848. £ 3 7 7 2 1 l{ EULOGY. It is easy to enact a local pageant for political effect ; to exalt a military chieftain, or a public orator. A crowd can be assembled for any purpose ; to observe the tricks of a mounte- bank, or the execution of a criminal. Any thing that speaks sharply to the senses of men will move the masses as by an electric impulse, and sway them to the will of the practised operator. But when a great nation stops suddenly in its wild career, and bows itself before the God of nations ; when it confesses to him, as if struck by the remembrance of his ma- jesty, and its own un worthiness, the cause of that effect is not magnetic, but moral. Something has touched not the nerves, but the heart. The recent death of Mr. Adams awakened that moral sym- pathy. The emotion was profound and universal. But it was peculiar. It was not as when Washington died. Some can recollect that then the great heart suffered a momen- tary paralysis. Consternation fell upon us. But in the speedy reaction there was a universal gush of sorrow. The nation was dissolved and found its relief in floods of tears. The old men and children, the young men and maidens wept togeth- er. We buried him as a father, a deliverer, and turned away from his grave in an agony of mourning. The men and women of that age, who survive, weep still at the name of Washington. It was not because he was not great ; nor be- cause the idea of his greatness was not, of itself, sufficient to have repressed that kind of sensibility. But it was because his greatness consisted in such a singular tempering of all the qualities of a virtuous patriot, it seemed not to be greatness. It brought him down condescendingly to our level, to be one of us whom he had saved, and we thought not so much of his character, of his life or his death, as of our loss, and the world's loss. It was then, in the infant State, as it was once, in a partial instance, in the infant Church, when the brethren of the great Apostle fell upon his neck and kissed him, sor- rowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more. But in respect to Mr. Adams it was not so. The nation, produced, as it were, and noutished, and set in its course by Washington, has grown up to lusty, independent manhood. Mr. Adams grew up with it. But he was a man in his child- hood, and always kept himself above it, and before it. An il- lustrious father's experience and wisdom produced their nat- ural effects in his opening mind, and gave him ability beyond his years and his generation. He always maintained his eminence by a corresponding discipline. He had our genius and spirit, our principles and sympathies, yet a wider com- prehension than any of his cotemporaries, a more profound learning, and a more weighty authority, He bore successive offices of the State, and at length its Chief Magistracy, with extraordinary freedom and facility, and then was able — a mar- vellous anomaly in the history of great men — to descend from the height of power and honor, and to mingle, without loss of dignity, in the turmoil and wrangling of a popular assembly. There, the man of no party, and no clique, he stood on his own principles, and judged, on his own account, of all meas- ures. He was always ready, direct, uncompromising and se- vere, contending equally with friends and foes, when they opposed themselves to his better knowledge and superior wis- dom ; yet submitting quietly as a child, when his voice could no more be heard. He was a monitor, a rebuker, a denounc- er, or a prophet, just as the varying moods of an inconstant and noisy people aroused the energies or sensibilities of his quenchless soul. At the death of sue a a man we could not weep. Besides, we have grown too old, and stout, and wick- ed to weep. Rather, we are astounded, afraid, and anxious. We look about us uneasily till the pressure of the visitation is relieved. We lament, but with a mingled feeling of re- morse for our own errors, and of admiration at his exalted vir- tues. We pay him the tribute of our praise and our regrets ; but wait, in the performance of his obsequies, only to go on more impetuously in our fatuous career, when the warnings and remonstrances of " the old man eloquent" are forgotten. Forgotten, but not by all. It is true politically, as religious- ly, that in all periods of decline, there is a remnant, the men of true virtue, fewer, always, than we could wish, more, fre- quently, than we fear. By them, if we are not led back, in some favored crisis of affairs, to our first principles and affec- tions, yet our catastrophe may be stayed. Therefore, the memory of Mr. Adams will be precious ; and his influence, in minds that can appreciate and accept it, may be more ef- fectual in his death than in his life. The occasion does not require me to recite the course of Mr. Adams' life, or the circumstances of his death. Nor would it suit my purpose to review his political careen-. My object is not biography, or criticism. I leave these to the curious and the politicians. I have no care to detail incidents, or discuss measures. Other themes better become these halls. I am call- ed to speak his eulogy; and I would search with you for those hidden elements of character from which his greatness, as by a course of natural vegetation, proceeded. I would com- mend to you some of the principles which lay at the founda- tion of his admitted excellence, by which also you may be- come like him benefactors of your country and of mankind. In a College, more than elsewhere, such an example should be recorded and remembered. I. " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." That great lesson of Inspiration was early inwrought into the mind of Mr. Adams. It was the first lesson that his mother tausrht him. It was enforced by a mother's proper example and authority. Whoever would know the secret of his greatness must go back to the nursery where the Pastor's daughter be- gan to form the great man of the State by the principles of the Chnrch. The influence was like precious ointment upon his youthful head. Its savor was never lost. In his native fields, or in the city ; in domestic intercourse, or in for- eign travel ; in the school, or the College ; in courtly circles, or the coteries of philosophers and statesmen ; in the engross- ing pursuits of his profession, or the more distracting engage- ments of public office, from the clerkship to the Presidency ; and in the subsequent sturdy and angry conflicts of the po- litical arena, the God of his Puritan mother was ever before him. He was guided by the Divine Word. That Word was made the test of all other learning. Through his long life a part of every morning was spent in the study of the Holy Scriptures, in different languages, with careful comparison, and serious inquiry ; and he walked, through every suceed- ing day, in the light of the everlasting Law. But it would be injustice to Mr. Adams to describe him merely as a conscientious man. It is probable that he was conversant with the Scriptures mainly as a miraculous and plenary Revelation of God, republishing, with greater light and authority, the ancient oral Revelations, from which we have derived the system of Natural Religion. The religious statesman, from the nature of his studies, and of his necessa- ry intercourse with men of the world, and especially from his practical concern with legislative and administrative govern- ment, is liable to tarry on this threshold of the Sanctuary. But Mr. Adams' mind was not formed exclusively upon such a model. He rejected all models. He passed the limits of sect, and had sympathy with all who accepted the supernatu- ral truths of Revelation. He extended his fellowship wherever he felt the presence of heavenly sentiments and affections. He loved best to tarry and to be edified where he perceived the motions of a Divine life, according to the words of Jesus Christ. He seemed to aspire to that heaven whence Christ the Creator proceeded forth, where now he ever liveth to send down the Spirit of love to all believing and loving minds, and from which he will be revealed again in judgment These distinctively Christian elements evidently existed in his mind, though not productive of that well denned Theology, or that fervent affection, which are their natural product, and which might have been attained by him in different pursuits. Those who knew him most intimately could better speak of him in reference to that interior principle of faith which is best exhibited in the habits of private life. But this general effect of faith was evident; viz. that he overcame the world. He act- ed in opposition to evil, and in defence of good, during a long life, in which these antagonistic principles were in violent warfare in the world around him. We accept the proof of the new life of God produced by his Spirit, in the unfaltering disciple, who penitently bowed himself as a sinner before God, and looked for redemption only through Jesus Christ ; in whom existed no taint of superstitious or rationalistic unbelief ; who submitted his moral judgments and affections to the test of the Divine Word ; who refused the enticement of Princes and Ambassadors to violate the Sabbath ; to whose lips obsceneness, falsehood and profaneness were unknown, even in circles where such vices would be no disparagement ; who never took advantage of his personal or official influence to violate temperance, purity, or good faith ; who was de- vout towards God, just, compassionate and forgiving towards men ; and who desired earnestly a better state, where right knowledge and true virtue only could be found. Such a man might be seen mostly in the outer courts of God's temple ; for there, as a civil officer, it would naturally befit him to find Ins place. But he must be supposed to know the way to the place of offering and intercession, to the mercy seat and the Shekinah. God did not see fit to honor him like those worthies of the ancient Theocracy, of more ex- cellent faith, who dwelt in caves and deserts, or who wander- ed in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented^ of whom the world was not worthy. Rather, he was classed with those few righteous kings of Israel, who were raised up to chastise idolatry, and to vindicate the righteous govern- ment of God. 8 II. With the religions element is naturally associated the moral. The two tables are sent down together. Mr. Adams was distinguished for his integrity. In this respect it would be difficult to find his equal. But I use integrity, not in the popular sense of honesty, veracity, sincerity, although these terms were applicable to him in their full extent ; but to sig- nify entireness, soundness and proportion both of private and official character. Rightly trained in infancy and childhood, his moral instincts were true and unpervertcd. Consequent- ly, as the social relations were gradually unfolded to him, the sense of responsibility became an active principle in his mind. He was born and educated at the right period for moral im- pression. Then, perhaps, more than ever before in history, man, his rights and duties ; the State, its groundwork, consti- tution and forms, its laws, conditions and relations, were sub- jects of daily discussion. In the circles where he moved these subjects were attentively considered by men of as great wisdom, experience and virtue as have lived in this, or any other age, or nation, England alone excepted in the time of the Commonwealth. Under such influences he appreciated human life, the social state, and the importance of making the conduct of life subservient to its proper ends. He is under- stood to have been remarkable for his self-discipline to pre- serve a sound mind in a sound body. He observed the laws of life, and of the mind, on his individual responsibility, and out of regard to his family and the State. Whatever was necessary to qualify him for his duties he studied and carried into cfFect. He omitted no engagement belonging to any place or relation in which he was called to act, never weary, never absent, never behind his time. All this was his habit, set- tled as the use of his necessary food. It was continued, till the close of his life, not from the principle of ambition, but the sense of duty. He felt that any thing else would be wrong. And not merely from the sense of duty, but because the right was more agreeable than the wrong. It would have been no priv- ilege to him to have received a dispensation. He was too much of a Puritan to desire indulgence. 9 The aim of Mr. Adams was to be right and wise; right in his principles, and wise in his application of them ; in which consists all true morality. His standard and rule were God's Revelations. He could not, therefore, be cheated by sophis- try, and he would not be seduced by temptation. Moral dis- tinctions were as familiar to him, in idea, as light and dark- ness, and he could not be led practically to confound them. He rejected the code of honor, the rules of etiquette, and the maxims of policy. Chesterfield was his scorn, and Machia- velli his abhorrence. In this lay his strength. It raised him above chicanery and corruption. It separated him from syco- phants and double-dealers. It quelled the fear of controversy or resistance. Strong in principle, he regarded not conse- quences otherwise than to provide against unnecessary evils. For the rest he cared not. He knew where was his last re- fuge, and that the eternal Rock could not be started from its foundations. He rejected that most wretched of all fallacies) that what is morally wrong may be politically right. He de- nounced the error and its abettors. He would not, for his life, have otherwise dishonored the Ruler of the world. He prov- ed that a statesman may be just. That he sometimes erred cannot be doubted, for he had the common passions of our nature, ; but his errors were not from the want, but from an excess of virtue. They were such as are always likely to be corrected in the natural reaction of a virtuous mind. He could be impetuous and unyielding ; but he was not obsti- nate, or malignant. He could be impatient and angry. But he was not resentful. He loved the arena, for there were ques- tions and conflicts on which great destinies depended ; and he could be terrible in the strife. But when it was over,hc would leave results to the sovereign arbiter, and go away to refresh himself with the sports of children. Mr. Adams' extraordinary sense of justice placed him in some attitudes of great dignity and sublimity which deserve the special notice of young men. His defence of the right of petition is probably the most exalted specimen of learned, in- dependent and stirring eloquence in forensic history. He 2 10 held that right to be the citadel of civil and religious liberty. He cared not who claimed it, on what occasions, with what arguments, or in what spirit. They might be wise, or foolish ; sane, or delirious ; Christians, Jews, pagans, or inn- dels. They might intend union, or disorganization ; life, or death ; and their related measures might be in correspond- ence with their ttue, or false ideas. It was not material. The principle was sacred. It was vital. It was worth more than Church, or State. It was worth more than the universe. For, it was necessary to the true ends of life. It was fundamental to the being of society. There could be no universe without it. Wherefore it must be maintained, though the heavens fall. He threw himself, with his exhaustless stores and Ins mighty energies, into the deadly sfrife. He comprehended the whole scene, its difficulties, its dangers, and its results. It may be said that he went alone ; for, who of all the great men about him had courage to take with him his advanced position, or who that dared, had abilitv to sustain with him the dreadful shock ; for he went to battle against a crazed and exasperat- ed nation. Day after day, year after year, the contest was prolonged. It was severe, sublime and terrible. The heavens thundered ; lightnings glared ; the earth shook ; volcanoes belched out their glowing fragments ; lofty towers top- pled down ; mountains were cast into the sea. Now we seem to lose him in the dust and smoke. His voice is drown- ed in the tumultuous din. Again his veteran form emerges. "We see the gleaming of his steel. We hear the strokes of his thundering arm. His shout rises shrill above the fiery storm, <; Justice ! Justice ! in the name of God, Justice and Libert}* !'' He conquers. He reclines upon his armor reeking, but not fainting, and utters his memorable acknowl- edgement of the Power that helped him, " Thank God, the seal is broken." Can we wonder, that when the conqueror at length fell, on the very scene of his victory, struck not by an earthly power, but by the hand of God, then the nation bowed its head ? 11 The discussions of slavery, in the halls of Congress, which grew mainly out of the controversy on the right of petition, gave occasion to Mr. Adams to exhibit the same profound and unconquerable sense of justice and equity. Some of his passages, in this respect, are unequalled, except in his own biography. Had the Representatives of the nation calmly listened to their petitioners ; had they taken judicious measures to instruct the country, and quiet its agitations ; in the discus- sions which must have ensued. Mr. Adams would probably have been less impassioned, but even more earnest and im- pressive. It is ever to be regretted that his views and those of other distinguished men could not have been so drawn out, upon the most comprehensive and impartial survey of the whole field of inquiry. Then the strife would have been, mainly, where it ought to have been, in the Legislature. The investigation and criticism would have been profound, intel- ligent and awful ; the people would have waited with a sub- dued and impartial spirit : the hopeless confusion of ideas, now existing, would have been prevented ; and the true issue would, by this time, have been put, which is now impossible, or too late, before the nation, and the world. To what conclusions Mr. Adams would have come, in the course of such an inquiry, it is difficult to conjecture. As it was, the ground on which lie >lood is evident ; viz. the Nat- ural Law, the Decalogue, and the Christian principles of re- ciprocity and benevolence. He tri:d the institution of slave- ry simply in the lights of essential and preceptive morality. In those lights he saw cause to condemn it as a moral evil. He desired to see it abolished, politically, because of its im- morality ; yet not with the madness of an incendiary, the ma- lignity of an atheist, or the destructive fury of a revolutiona- ry sans culotte. He would not, in destroying slavery, have precipitated the related institutions of Church and State. It is true, that with his determined sense of justice, and in consist- ency with his defence of the right of petition, he might have found himself obliged, at length, to proceed to that extremity. He would not have chosen to die before his time ; but Sam- 12 son-like, if a maddened people had imprisoned him, and pu? out his eyes, when brought out for their sport between the pil- lars of the idolatrous temple, he would have been likely, by a desperate effort, to bury himself and the nation in a common ruin. But he was a Puritan, and not a Jacobin. He would not have denounced his country till his country had absolute- ly denied its God. And then he would have chosen to die with his country, rather than to live and revel, like a Jaco- bin, in anarchy and blood. But if the discussions on slavery had proceeded as they ought, Mr. Adams might have taken, at length, a dif- ferent position. For, though he did not seem to see it, the ground on which he stood was doubtful. Where he stood he was firm, erect, sublime. Admitting the correctness of his issue, his course was generous, and Christian. But the true issue is not, whether slavery, assumed to be a human insti- tution, is contrary to justice and benevolence ; or whether, being morally and politically bad, it ought to be abolished ? But the issue has respect both to the basis of slavery and its character. It is whether slavery is not a positive institution of God, and whether, being a positive institution, it is not morally and politically bad, only as it is unrighteously or im- prudently administered. That is the issue of slavery ; viz. its Jus Divinum. We cannot safely proceed a step till we have gained a foothold by settling that original and fundamental question of the Divine Bight. Otherwise we are bewildered in a hopeless labyrinth. Unhappily, that question has not found admittance to the legislative halls. It is forestalled be- fore the people. It is hardly known in the institutions of learning. It is mainly excluded from the Church ; or, both in Church and State, it is passed over without examination, or decided without adequate reference to the only legitimate authority. How could it be otherwise at a period when the Divine Bight of any thing is almost an obsolete idea, and when the most essential and vital questions of Church and State are settled, just like polytechnics, upon the judgment of conceited rcasoners, or idle dreamers, in lyoeums. academies 13 and district schools, and not, before the only legitimate tribu- nals, upon the authority of God ? The question of slavery takes us to the Bible, and not to nature. It is a question above the instincts, or induction, or speculation. And it takes us to the Bible to inquire, not at the Decalogue, or at Christ's new commandment, but God's municipal enactments. It is a question, not about the prin- ciples of natural and moral government, but its administra- tion. It is a question, not of right and duty, but of crime and punishment ; not of tenure, but forfeiture ; not of the original relations of man to man, but the violent breaking up and sun- dering of those relations for the sins of men. It is a question, morally, about the Divine jealousy in visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children. And, politically, it is a ques- tion, not about the maxims of an uncertain and varying econ- omy, but the necessary balance of a disordered system. It is not a question of capital, and trade, and labor, according to any superficial ordering of these distinctions ; but essentially, and morally, in reference to their groundwork and their true ends ; a question between order and insubordination, govern- ment and anarchy, life and death, in this upside down world of ours, till " the times of the Restitution." And because it is a question of simple Revelation, and such a question as it is, though we know not how Mr. Adams, upon a deeper study, would have decided it, it is a matter of extreme regret that a mind like his, so full of reverence for the Bible, and so able to extricate its meaning, on such a subject, should not have been drawn peremptorily to the inquiry. I am aware that it would have been difficult for Mr. Adams, or any other American statesman, to approach that question without extreme embarrassment. For the nation had pre- judged it. It had placed itself before the world, in the Declar- ation of Independence, on the fallacy of a petitio principii. It is true, the nation had taken back the assumption in the Con- stitution and Laws, and more practically, in the system of sla- very. But that made the case no better, but worse. For, so we stood before the world with a falsehood in one hand, or 14 the other ; a fatal dilemma, which to statesmen, as wellf as to philosophers, is the most inconvenient of all positions The Representatives of the nation could not have chosen to face an alternative so humiliating and severe. However, no man sooner than Mr. Adams would have submitted to that necessity, if naturally laid upon him ; for he was magnani- mous. No man would have sooner corrected, if possible, the singular anomaly. Or, if it could not be absolutely correct- ed, and if the nation must stand false on one side or the oth- er, no man would have been more careful to mitigate the evil, and avert the danger, by shifting the falsehood from the right hand to the left; that is, by correcting his issue, and ac- cepting the consequences, not of a treasured falsehood, but of an unintentional mistake. The ground taken by Mr. Adams on the questions of Chi- na and Oregon is another evidence of his severe attachment to general principles, and his fearless defence of them, in dis- regard of political views, and the measures of party. That a nation ought not to separate itself from the fellowship of the nations ,and refuse to bear its part in the work of life, is a prin- ciple of Natural Law, and of the Decalogue. It is practical- ly necessary to the greatest good of mankind in general. By consequence, it is equally evident, that when this fundament- al obligation is violated by any nation, upon whatever pre- texts, the right of redress must exist somewhere. This right can be administered only according to God's ordinary meth- od of chastising guilty nations ; viz. by war. The principle involved is of duty, crime, and punishment, without which the world as it is could not subsist. For this principle all States are founded by Divine authority, the bounds of their habitation are appointed, and the sword is put into their hand. In accordance with it God set up and administered the pat- tern State of the ancient Theocracy. By equal reason it is evident that a State ought not to appro- priate territory which it could not occupy, to the prejudice of other States, or any one of the family of States, which might be able to fulfil, or was in the course of fulfilling the Divine 15 injunction to "replenish the earth." — On these principles Mr. Adams took his stand. And his position, in point of princi- ple, was not the less sound, because he had been led to it, as he was bold to profess, by the word of God. Whether, in the one case, the right to compel China resid- ed in Great Britain ; or, in the other, whether the United States had reasonable ground of controversy with England, in consistency with these principles, are wholly different ques- tions. They are questions of policy, subject of course to judg- ment; and opinion. They are to be settled mainly in the lights of civil and diplomatic history, and of political economy. In these lights Mr. Adams had walked intelligently for threescore years and ten. With such questions he had been more con- versant, and had a better knowledge of them, than any other living man. Still, he might err. For, in the application of our principles, there may be sometimes doubts and difficul- ties which neither rectitude nor wisdom can satisfactorily over- come. In such cases, the accurate balancing of opposite probabilities, and the adjustment of conflicting evidence may depend more on temperament than virtue. In some condi- tions the soulless and bloodless politician may make a sound- er inference, or a shrewder guess, than the highminded and earnest statesman, whose shoes' latchet he is not worthy to unloose. Mr. Adams' veins were sometimes very full. I have chosen to put Mr. Adams in these lights, not because I would commend his views of these questions, as questions of policy, for I do not accept them ; but because they illus- trate his strength of principle, and his manly independence. Confident in his own judgment he dared, in the one case, to stand against the general opinion of the civilized world ; and, in the other, to give seeming countenance to a government which had not his confidence ; a government, which he did not believe to be capable of maintaining its own decisions, and which, in its zeal to extend the domain of the country, would be likely to hasten its catastrophe. In all these respects, the example of Mr. Adams is worthy of the especial consideration of young men, and now, more than 16 ever, the educated young men of our country. For, we live in an age when these virtues of our illustrious fathers are dying out ; an age which exalts the voice of the people above the voice of God, and which on all hands, and in all parties, concedes to public opinion what it refuses to the moral law. III. The moral qualities of Mr. Adams were the natural foundation, as they were also the proper measure of his intel- lectual greatness. "We deny that there can be the highest or- der of intellect without an active moral sense. For the intel- lectual power of the mind is physical, and it can have no true guidance but from a still higher and more authoritative phys- ical power, the conscience. We deny, also, that the highest physical ability of any, or all the mental powers can exist without the moral life, the heavenly love, produced through the Gospel in the soul. Otherwise, the mind is an automaton, its discipline is mechanical, and its attainments are merely artistic, formal and superficial. Mind, in distinction from the heart, is as incapable of growth in its proper order, as the body without the principle of life. It may be enlarged artificially and mechanically, by accretion, but not by the natural process of developement. Or, if the moral essence is corrupted, then, equally, without a restored healthy activity, the developement of the intellect will be partial, disproportion- ate and unshapely. There are doubtless immoral men of great intellects. But they will not bear a dispassionate and searching criticism. They are great only in some things, and for some purposes. They are great, not for all, but for their party or sect, their patrons or retainers. They fail in those exigencies which require entireness, soundness and self-devotion. They are cast down when the selfish and par- tial interests which they serve are no longer ascendant. Or, they are great only while they live, or in the age which has felt the power of their fascination. Posterity tries them. The tinsel decays and drops off by time. The hidden fallacy works out. They are monuments, not of human greatness, but of human folly ; of folly on their own part, in seeking for excellence without virtue ; and on the world's part, in its be- 17 ing cheated, generation after generation, by such false lights that steam up from beneath to lure it to its ruin. Such was not the greatness of Mr. Adams. Without doubt his mental powers were constitutionally of a high order, and well-proportioned. But he was not more excellent, in this re- spect, than many others. Had not his mother taught him, and had he not submitted his understanding daily and de- voutly to the Bible, the difference between him and most oth- er great men would not have been remarkable. As it was, he became greater, because he did not, like them, invert God's natural order, and put the intellect before the conscience and the heart. He began at the foundation. Consequently, his greatness was in essence, not in accident ; in quality, not in measure ; in spirit, not in form ; in matter, not in manner ; in conduct, not in management ; in comprehension, truthfulness, and efficiency, not in arrangement, affectation, and finesse. But for his moral discipline he would have been a pedant, but not a scholar ; a politician, but not a statesman ; a skil- ful wire puller in the drama of his country, but not its master spirit, the embodiment of its genius, the representative of its vital principles. Others might have been as tall as he, but not as sturdy ; more graceful, but less majestic ; moving fan- tastically in the breeze, but upturned or shattered in the storm. Others could have trimmed the sails of the ship of State, but not like him controlled the helm ; they could heave the lead, but not find the latitude ; they could contribute to the glad- ness of the scene under sunny skies, or on peaceful waters, but only to its terrors in the whirlwind, and among the rocks. Mr. Adams' mind had magnitude, proportion, fullness, solid- ity and strength, the effect of growth, and not inflation. The moral life was in it ; its aliment was righteous principle, and consequently it was ever vigorous and productive. The green leaf of the spring failed not before its time ; its blossom died not unnaturally enforced ; and he brought forth fruit an hun- dred fold in his old age ; for his root drew nourishment from the depths. The root, the tree, the leaf, the fruit were full of sap when the lightning came. Whose mental stores like his, 3 18 so ample, so varied, so adjusted, so ready at command, so pertinent to all the exigencies of his private, or official life, so treasured up for the benefit of his successors, and the instruc- tion of mankind ? Was the characteristic of Mr. Adams' intellect genius ? No. Or talent ? No. Was it perception, penetration, judgment, fancy ? No. In any one of these he was equalled by other men who had unwisely stimulated some special faculty, or had made haste to be great by popular affectation. But it was all these naturally combined, and trained, proportionately, to the search of truth, in exact, severe and painful discipline. Did he become great by observation, by reading, by thought, by writing, by discourse ? Not by any one of these alone, but by the practical harmonizing of them all. For, who like him made all the senses inlets to the materials of knowledge ? Who like him gathered up not the floating, ephemeral and and trashy learning of the times, but the matured wisdom of the wise ? Who like him elaborated these treasured ele- ments into systems of his own, by which the men of onesid- ed arid partial views, great though they were, were confound- ed through his earnest and unartificial eloquence ? Was he a man of theory, or of practice ? Was he a discoverer, an organizer, an administrator ? No one of these alone in sepa- ration from the others, or according to any mere ideal of these distinct classes of great men. For, though he could soar into imaginary worlds, he accepted nothing that would not stand experiment, nothing that suited not the actual states and con- ditions of society, or that did not consist with the Revelations of God. Do you ask for analysis ? He could sift. Or, for synthesis ? He could construct. Yet was he not a captious critic, nor a conceited architect. His mind, in this respect, was correctly shadowed by his style of private life. He was not envious to mar the palace of his ostentatious neighbor ; nor vain to excel him, though he might have done it, in the magnificence of his own dwelling. He was better suited with the venerable and well appointed, though plain and homely mansion of his fathers. 19 We could wish that the distinctively Christian element had been more active in the mind of Mr. Adams. It would have more exalted his faculties, and given them a higher direction for the ffood of others. But, as a statesman, he might then have been too far beyond his age. He had sufficient virtue to keep him above the atmosphere of mere worldly men, but not out of their sight. He was Christian enough to refuse the fashion and pageantry of this world, to abhor its thought- lessness and frivolity, its loose maxims, and its vain pursuits; but not enough, by the absolute renouncing of the world, to fall off entirely from its regards. Had he lived in a great city he would have been thought a Stoic, or a Cynic, which he was not. But he would nevertheless have ruled the city, be- cause, there, a Stoic or a Cynic is not so uncongenial, as the determined and consistent Christian. Less of the spirit of righteousness would have reduced him nearer to the level of the generality ; more would have alienated their confidence. In either case he could not have led them, but would have lost their suffrage, and the country would not have enjoyed the benefit of his official labors. A monarch, if he willed, might be also a Prophet, or an Apostle. But, in a Democra- cy, no man, who is greatly above the moral sympathies of the people, can be a ruler, except in the time of rebuke and dan- ger. Mr. Adams was as elevated in virtue as he could be without losing his position ; and that he would have lost, as it was, but for his profound ability. Yet he was not what he was for the sake of his position, but because of Him who giveth to every man severally as he will. He was God's in- strument to modify the evil tendencies of the declining State, not to accumulate the aggressive energy of Christianity, or exemplify its passive virtues. It would indeed be great glory to Christianity that such a man as Mr. Adams should be wor- thy of the faggot. But Christianity must not glory, when the world would suffer, out of measure, from the quenching of its great lights. The Church wants its confessors and martyrs. But the State must also have, occasionally, its righteous ml- 20 ers, or the bow of promise would be broken. God's wisdom is best. To Mr. Adams the end of earth has come. The sage has uttered his wisdom ; the patriot has ended his labors. Cen- trally, between the stormy Capes of Massachusetts Bay, on the confines of the Old Colony, between Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill, within a humble enclosure, the nation has laid the dust of its great statesman. He sleeps among his breth- ren, children of the Puritans, himself a Puritan, and the best civil representative that remained of a race of men, whose like has not been known in the annals of the world. He lived through the whole period of his nation's constitutional histo- ry. He contributed, more than any other man, to perpetuate its first principles, and to keep alive the genius of its insti- tutions. He had a better comprehension of its relations, and a more profound sense of its interests. He left it the richest legacy of civil knowledge, the most illustrious example of patriotic virtue. He received its highest honors, living and dead. As his body is borne from the Capitol to his native village, the husbandmen in the fields stand still as the rush- ing cortege passes, and raise their hats from their heads. Shall he live still in the life of his nation ? Shall the country of Washington and the Adamses be worthy of its greatest benefactors ? Shall the nation live ? Or, must it follow the law of the individual, " ashes to ashes, dust to dust ?" Who shall solve the problem of its prospective his- tory ? What result of civil and religious liberty shall be writ- ten for a future age ? That problem will be solved speedily. Every thing for good or evil vegetates rapidly in a state of freedom. The results of popular liberty will soon be written. It requires now but a day to revolutionize a kingdom ; and but a few years for a liberated people to reveal what is in their hearts. A half century performs now, what was the work of a decade of centuries when man was held in by bit and bridle. The nations hasten to their destiny. What is that destiny ? Shall we ask of the past ? Shall we ask of the present ; ?aot of the inventors, the politicians, the poets. 21 or the orators ; but of the statesmen and philosophers ? They have told us already. We know what such men said in 1793. We know what they said when the federal idea of our repub- lic went out with the elder Adams. What would they tell us now ? the great men of England, Germany, France, and the old men of our own country ? What should we hear from De Tocqueville, Guizot, or from less interested observers, looking down from some height upon the Tuilleries, the Chamber of Deputies, or the Boulevards ? They would tell us that man reacts from superstition to fanaticism, from re- straint and servitude to intoxication. They would tell us that the next chapter of the history of Christendom will be of an- archy ; that having learned our modern lesson of human per- fectibility, speculatively and romantically, from the reason, and not from the Bible, we shall in due time learn its essen- tial fallacy, practically and morally, from the Providence of God. But where is the point of rest between these extremes they know not. We must ask that question not of the State, but of the Church. We must ask it of a higher Oracle than man, of Theology, of Christ's Apocalypse. Do you say, we need not ask, for our country has tried the experiment ; it has solved the problem ; that here humanity is disenthralled, free, intelligent, successful and triumphant ? But what is human- ity ? All history, past, present and future, is but a demon- stration of humanity, of humanity sanctified on the one hand, unsanctified on the other, and these invisible families of good and evil proximately represented by the visible organizations of Church and State. Are Church and State, in our coun- try, right, each in itself, and both in their reciprocal relations? Have we attained to the true ideal ? Are we likely to attain it? Are we blending the roses of all colors in one concen- trated glorious white, the image of all truth and purity ? Are we becoming the true Theocracy, the end of promise ? Or, as man more affects self-government, does he not, practically, become more independent of the government of God? Is not our modern idea of the social compact necessarily atheistic ? The demonstration is not yet complete. The history is not 22 yet written. Our country is still a problem. "Who shall solve it ? If you say, not Jhe old men, then, I answer, the young men. I repeat emphatically, that is the practical les- son of the new generation. The responsibility is theirs. If they want it, God throws it on them, a greater than he ever laid on the shoulders of men. If any of our young men learn not that lesson truly and wisely, if they bear not that burden with the principles and spirit of their pilgrim fathers, let them never pass by the -graveyard at Quincy, let them never find their way to the valley of the Potomac, LBD'ib I