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STfte Ancient anJi jBJonoraiblc ptati. 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 PREACHED ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF 
 
 HON. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 
 
 TO THE 
 
 UNITARIAN CHURCH AND CONGREGATION, 
 KEENE, N. H. 
 
 ^ ON SABBATH AFTERNOON, 
 
 March 5, 1848* 
 
 BY A. A. lilVERMORE. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY KEQ0EST. 
 
 KEENE: 
 PRINTED BY J. W. PRENTISS & CO. 
 
 1848. 
 
3T7 
 
 Lis 
 
 TO 
 
 THE YOUNG MEN 
 
 OF HIS PARISH, 
 
 THIS DISCOURSE IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, 
 
 BY THEIR 
 
 FRIEND AND PASTOR, 
 
SERMON. 
 
 ISAIAH, III. 1-3. 
 
 "for behold, the lord — DOTH TAKE AWAY — THE MIGHTY MAN — 
 THE JUDGE, — AND THE PRUDENT, AND THE ANCIENT — AND THE 
 HONORABLE MAN, AND THE COUNSELLOR — AND THE ELOQUENT 
 ORATOR." 
 
 It is the office of the pulpit to discourse not only upon 
 the abstract truths of Christianity, but upon their application 
 to the lives of men. It is to interpret the whole of human 
 life by the wisdom which is from above. It is to justify the 
 ways of Providence to man, and persuade him to bow to 
 them with a filial trust. And oftentimes by illustrations 
 drawn from history and biography, it may be possible to 
 unfold and enforce the duties of the disciples of Christ in a 
 more effectual manner than by any amount of general rea- 
 soning and exhortation. The Catholic Church has its cal- 
 endar of saints, and a special day set apart to commemorate 
 with religious services their virtues. If we forbear, out of 
 respect to a higher than any human tribunal, to canonize 
 any man, living or dead, we are not therefore debarred from 
 dwelling in the solemn meditations of the sanctuary upon 
 the great and the good. 
 
The occasion of these remarks is obvious. And as the 
 iron tongue in the tower above has already discoursed, for 
 its brief hour in sad and monotonous knell, of the bereave- 
 ment that has fallen upon the country, it may be proper 
 with the living tongue to speak of him over whose tomb a 
 great nation bends in heartfelt sorrow and reverence. It is 
 not my purpose to repeat the eulogies of others, or to spend 
 the allotted season in glorifying the dead. He that was 
 known through the world as one of the greatest of living 
 men, and whose praise has been uttered by the most elo- 
 quent voices of the capitol, needs not the humble service 
 of the village church to emblazon his fame, or embalm his 
 memory. But something should be done for our sakes, 
 if not for his, to draw the moral of his life, and to make a 
 practical improvement of the sublime lessons which it has 
 taught us. For " he, being dead, yet speaketh." 
 - John Quincy Adams was born in what is now Quincy, 
 Mass., on the lltli of July, 1767, and died at Washington, 
 on the 23d of last month, in the eighty-second year of his 
 age. For sixty-seven years of this protracted life, he was 
 more or less engaged in the public service, from the humble 
 post of private secretary of legation to the ofhce of President 
 of the Union. His childhood and youth, which were passed 
 under the care and culture of his distinguished father and a 
 most noble and heroic mother, well fitted him to act a high 
 and useful part in all these various stations. Of the spirit 
 of the latter a single quotation from a letter written to him 
 by her while in Europe, at the age of eleven years, is a 
 sufficient evidence,—^ " Dear as you are to me, I would 
 much rather you should have found your grave in the 
 ocean you have crossed, or that any untimely death crop 
 you in your infant years, than see you an immoral, profli- 
 gate, or graceless child." Such counsels, of Spartan firm- 
 
 *Mrs. Adams's Letters, vol. i, p. 123. 
 
5 
 
 ness and Puritan principle, must have sunk deep in the 
 boy's heart, and moulded the future man. She further 
 said, " Great learning and superior abilities, should you ev- 
 er possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, 
 unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them. 
 Adhere to those regiigious sentiments and principles which 
 were early instilled into your mind, and remember that you 
 are accountable to your Maker for all your words and ac- 
 tions." A life of untainted virtue, of spotless honor, of fear- 
 less truth, and incorruptible integrity, in pubHc and private, 
 amid the corruptions of foreign courts, and on the dizzy 
 heights of power, now testifies that these words were not 
 in vain. He was all that she taught him to be. He lived 
 out all her precepts. He planted no thorns in his memory 
 by youthful dissipation. He turned not one hair grey by 
 abusins: the vioorous constitution which God gave him. 
 His mind was clear and effective to the last. " His eye 
 was not dim, nor his natural force abated." In the words 
 of another, — *" Standing upon the extreme boundary of 
 human life, and disdaining all the relaxations and exemp- 
 tions of age, his outer frame-work only was crumbling 
 away. The glorious engine within still worked on un- 
 hurt, uninjured, amid all the delapidations around it, and 
 worked on with its w^onted and iron power, until the blow 
 was sent from above which crushed it into fragments be- 
 fore us." 
 
 His last words were, that " it was the end of earth, and 
 that he was composed," — thus expressing at once his good 
 conscience, his christian submission, and assured immortal 
 trust. 
 
 There may have been, and there may be now, greater in- 
 tellects in this country than the mind of the departed ; but 
 never one that had better done its duty to itself, and that 
 
 * Gov. McDowell, of Virginia, 
 1^ 
 
was more fully alive in every faculty and power, and that 
 was always in finer working order ; never one that had ac- 
 cumulated richer stores of human and divine lore ; never 
 one that could act at once the poet, the philosopher, the 
 theologian, and the statesman with more zeal and ability. 
 He was a universal man. His mind was encyclopedian. 
 There may be more refined and angelic characters than his, 
 but not one into which had been imported a larger amount 
 of substantial, pure-minded. Christian principle, and more 
 fervid Christian sentiments. Whatever he did, he did with 
 his whole might, and threw himself into the scale with 
 what he felt to be right, let who would be on the other side. 
 There may be leaders of parties in our land that are regarded 
 with more enthusiastic interest by their adherents ; but nev- 
 er one who was so universally respected and loved by men 
 of all parties, and who has received such a general outbm-st 
 of minoled regret and reverence at his decease. Cold and 
 severe as some may have thought him to be in his man- 
 ners, he had yet won a place in the universal heart of the 
 people ; and it was because they had confidence that he 
 was a thoroughly good man. All hearts melted into sym- 
 pathy when it was known that he was dying at the Capitol, 
 and the crowds which gathered around him were as chil- 
 dren who drew to the bed-side of a father, to weep and pray 
 during the last struggles of nature. 
 
 Believing that God is in history and in biography, and 
 that he would teach us by great examples, great truths and 
 duties, what lessons are we to look for in the life and death 
 of this eminent Christian statesman ? What can he do for 
 our young men, and for our old men too ? What direction 
 cau his example lend to our plans? What insph-ation 
 breathe into our hopes ? What rebuke administer to our 
 weaknesses? and with what shame crhnson our sins? This 
 is the lesson of to-day, and we would bow to hear it with 
 waiting and reverent hearts. 
 
Not the least of these instructions is the wonder-workins' 
 power of Industry. The subject of these remarks was gift- 
 ed with splendid intellectual and moral endowments. His 
 breast was lighted with the fires of genius. But because 
 Heaven had given him ten talents instead of one, he did 
 not therefore feel at liberty to squander them. "What God 
 bountifully gave, he generously cultivated. He diligently 
 resorted, from early years, to the books, teachers, means, 
 and institutions that would develop, refine, and strengthen 
 his capacities. He never finished his education till the day 
 of his death. He was always learning and always coming 
 to the knowledge of the truth. In the midst of the most 
 active, perplexed and responsible public duties, with the 
 cares of a nation upon his mind, he never relaxed his stud- 
 ies. He was a scholar his life long. His industry began 
 with the morning sun, and was as untiring and punctual as 
 that luminary. He had no fear of the mechanism of habit. 
 He well knew that a life without method is a life without 
 honor. The round of the hours he paced with the regular- 
 ity of a sentinel on guard, and every striking of tlie clock 
 announced to his conscience that all was well. He had 
 domesticated in his heart the wish of the poet : 
 
 " And as each morning sun shall rise, 
 O, lead me onward to the skies." 
 
 No man, perhaps, ever performed, for so many years, a 
 greater amount of intellectual and official labor. And order 
 and energy were the keys he carried to unlock the intrica- 
 cies of public affairs, and the hoarded treasuries of knowl- 
 edge. The utmost vigilance in the cares of state never ab- 
 sorbed his attention to the exclusion of his own self-culture. 
 He well knew that the fountain which is perpetually drawn 
 from, must be as perpetually filled. He had tasks that re- 
 quired the most athletic intellect. Hence his private studies 
 were those of a devoted student, wliile his public engage- 
 
ments were those of the most laborious statesman. To 
 mention a single item ; he read, as I learn from good pri- 
 vate authority, the whole of Cicero's voluminous works 
 since he was fifty years old. What an example of patient 
 and persevering labor to set before the men of this genera- 
 tion I He was not ashamed to be a hard worker. 
 
 How long will it take the world to learn that industry is 
 one of the foundation stones to the edifice of a great and 
 useful life ; and that, in more senses than one, if any will 
 not work, neither shall they eat I Toil, hard, patient, life- 
 long toil alone can build up men, and scholars, and Chris- 
 tians. If God have given us powers, it is that we may use 
 them ; if time, it is that we may improve it ; if opportuni- 
 ties, it is that we may take advantage of them, for his ser- 
 vice and the good of men. Not the least of the sins with 
 which we are blackening the fair pages of the book of life, 
 is lost hours and lost days. It must smite us with an unus- 
 ual pang of regret, to reflect that we can never regain what 
 we have thus misspent. 
 
 We see, in this notable example, what these days need 
 to learn, the pov'er and influence of the individual man. 
 This is an age of associations and majorities ; we must not 
 overlook the rights or the power of the few or the one. 
 Thought governs, not numbers. Souls, like arguments, are 
 to be weighed, not counted. Public opinion, after all, is 
 not what is collected, but what is first manufactured and 
 sent out, and then gathered together again, and labelled as 
 the voice of the people. Leading minds, popular tal- 
 ants, do the thinking for a country, and give stamp and 
 pressure to the age. One will, clear and self-assured and 
 persistent, is stronger than thousands. The column of wa- 
 ter in an inch tube can balance the ocean. One man, 
 whose soul is in the thing, can change a whole town, or 
 county, or state, in a quarter of a century, if he have tact 
 and wisdom, and essentially and forever modify their ideas 
 
9 
 
 upon education, or religion, or government. He may, it is 
 true, be the product of his times, but his times are the pro- 
 duct, too, of him. If the Reformation made Luther, Lu- 
 ther, too, made the Reformation. We have seen refor- 
 mations fail because they had no Luther. If Method- 
 ism created Wesley, yet Methodism alone, or the state of 
 public sentiment that was ripe for it, without Wesley, would 
 have been only smoke without fire. 
 
 In Mr Adams, we had what is too rare in this country, a 
 bold, independent, original mind, that did its own thinking, 
 stood upon its own basis, and asked no man's consent to 
 exist or act. His individuality might sometimes run into 
 caprice, or passion, or obstinacy ; who shall calculate to a 
 hair's breadth the orbit of so mighty a will ? But he was 
 always himself, and not another man's. Still, he afl'ected 
 not to be singular, but to be true to his own idea of right. 
 He never could be accused of giving up to party what was 
 meant for mankind. And he had his reward. Called im- 
 practicable, scolded at and brow-beaten by tm'ns on all 
 sides,— sometimes standing alone, like a rock in mid-ocean, 
 and lashed by the winds and waves from every quarter, yet 
 at last all parties came round, did him justice, and loaded 
 him with praise, and falsified the stigma that republics are 
 ungrateful. In the great battle which he fought for liberty 
 and right, almost single-handed at first, he never swerved 
 nor faltered, but persevered year after year, until he gained 
 the victory. He was stronger in himself, and in the right, 
 than any party, or all parties, — than the whole country be- 
 sides. Lures and bribes, and anonymous threats of assas- 
 sination never silenced his voice, or stayed his pen, when 
 right and freedom were in danger of being cloven down. — 
 How glorious the power of the individual man when he 
 weds himself to great principles, and in the strength of the 
 living God goes forth conquering and to conquer ! Such 
 a man shall not die before he can give thanks that " the 
 
10 
 
 seal is at last broken." It is an honor to New England to 
 have produced so great a character, so vast a will, so heroic 
 a soul. It is better than a thousand arguments to repel the 
 charge of her narrow-mindedness, and fanaticism, and lack 
 of pati'iotism. He was the consummate flower of his na- 
 tive land, and the representative of all its best leading ideas 
 and characteristics, — its Puritanism, its industry, its enter- 
 prise, its education, its liberty, its reformation spirit. It has 
 been most truly said, '^ " His character seemed an embodi- 
 ment of the heroic past," while " he shadowed forth the 
 ideas by which the world is to be carried along in its future 
 progress." " Mighty sage ! Noble champion of freedom! 
 Nothing can rob our institutions of the glory of having pro- 
 duced such a man." 
 
 But we must consider now what ought never to be left 
 out of account in our estimate of character, for it is some- 
 how its all-pervading essence, the religion, the ivorsMp, the 
 faith, of the ancient and honorable man. Here the task is 
 easy. We do not have to hunt after distant evidences, or 
 rebut suspicions, or labor to raise distrust into conviction. 
 No man ever doubted that Mr Adams was a devout, con- 
 sistent, straight-forward, sincere Christian. None among all 
 the hosts of his enemies ever dared to tarnish his pure fame 
 with whispers of gambling, or debauchery, or intemper- 
 ance. His youfh was pure, his manhood and old age with- 
 out spot or blemish in all Christian faith and good works. 
 He died the death of the righteous. All was complete and 
 consistent and beautiful throughout. He carried the savor 
 of his mother's prayers from the cradle to the Capitol, where 
 fell the last trembling sands of existence. He had been 
 through the honors, and dangers, and pleasures, and perplex- 
 ities of a varied and tried life, and he came out of the fur- 
 
 * Mr Dwight, of Springfield, in the Massaclmsetts Legislature. 
 
11 
 
 nace untouched and unscathed — his faith, and hope, and 
 charity stronger, and broader, and livelier than ever. 
 
 He was a theologian as well as a practical disciple. He 
 was not only a reader, but a profound student of the word 
 of God ; and he found it to be an unfailing fountain of 
 life. He was accustomed for fifty years to peruse the 
 Scriptures in at least seven different versions, in different lan- 
 guages,' — ancient and modern,^ — and to read them through 
 in this manner every year. He completed an entire poeti- 
 cal paraphrase of the Psalms of David ; and in one of the 
 most approved f collections of hymns, published within a 
 few years, twenty-two are from his pen. The fire and 
 beauty of his devotional poetry may be seen in two al- 
 most as fine Christian lyrics as any in the language; one on 
 Time, and another on the Death of Little Children, in our 
 own Hymn Book. His fervid piety breaks out in the fol- 
 lowing hymn for Sabbath morning : — 
 
 " Hark! 't is tlie holy temple's bell; 
 
 Tiie voice that sumraons me to prayer: 
 My heart, each roving fancj' quell; 
 
 Come, to the house of God repair. 
 
 "TherCj while in orison sublime, 
 
 Souls to the throne of God ascend. 
 Let no unhallowed child of time 
 
 Profane pollutions with them blend. 
 
 " How for thy wants canst thou implore. 
 
 Crave for thy frailties pardon free. 
 Of praise the votive tribute pour. 
 
 Or bend, in thanks, the grateful knee;- — 
 
 " If from the awful King of Kings, 
 Each bauble lures thy soul astray*? 
 
 *Tliesewere; (1) our common English Bible; (2) Thomsoa's Translation of 
 the Septuagint; (3) the Latin Vulgate; (4) Calvin's Translation in French; (5) 
 the Catholic Translation in French; (6) Luther's Translation in German; (7) the 
 New Testament in Greek. t Rev. W. P. Lunt's Christian Psalter. 
 
12 
 
 If to this dust of earth it clings, 
 And, fickle, flies from heaven away'? 
 
 " Pure as the blessed seraph's vow, 
 
 O let the sacred concert rise; 
 Intent with humble rapture bow. 
 
 Adore the Ruler of the skies. 
 
 " Bid earth-born atoms all depart; 
 
 Within thyself collected, fall; 
 And give one day, rebellious heart. 
 
 Unsullied to the Lord of all."* 
 
 He was a Unitarian in faith and doctrines, and was a 
 communicant in the Unitarian Church in his native place, 
 but he disclaimed all sectarian names, and embraced in his 
 ample charity all denominations of Christians. Three years 
 since he presided at the great annual festival of our brethren, 
 and earnest words then dropped from his lips, quivering with 
 age and emotion, recommending charity and good will to all 
 who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. He had none 
 of that miserable error that it is unmanly to be a disciple of 
 Jesus : he subscribed to the poet's line,— . 
 
 " Christian is the highest style of man." 
 
 All that parental lips taught, he tested by study and experi- 
 ence, and early convictions grew tenfold stronger. 
 
 When absent from his family as Minister of the United 
 States to Russia, he wrote as follows to his son ; f "in your 
 letter of the 10th of January to your mother you mention, 
 that you read to your aunt a chapter in the Bible, or a sec- 
 tion from Dr Doddridge, every evening. This information 
 gave me great pleasure ; for, so strong is my veneration for 
 the Bible, so strong my belief that, when daily read and med- 
 itated upon, it is, of all books in the world, that which con- 
 tributes most to make men good, wise, and happy; that the 
 
 * Christian Psalter , Hymn 536. f Christian Register, vol. 3, p. 144. 
 
13 
 
 earlier my children begin to read it, and the more steadily 
 they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their 
 lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes that 
 they will prove useful citizens to their country, respect- 
 able members of society, and a real blessing to their pa- 
 rents. 
 
 " I advise you, my son, in whatever you read, and most 
 of all in reading the Bible, to remember, that it is for the pur- 
 pose of making you wiser and more vktuous. I have for 
 myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through 
 the Bible once every year ; I have always endeavored to 
 with the same spirit and temper of mind which I now recom- 
 mend to you ; that is, with the intention and desire that it 
 might contribute to your advancement in wisdom and vir- 
 tue ; my desire is indeed very imperfectly successful; for, 
 like the apostle Paul, I find a law in my members warring 
 against the law of my mind. But as I know it is my nature 
 to be imperfect, so I know it is my duty to aim at perfec- 
 tion; and feeling and deploring my own frailties, I can only 
 pray Almighty God for the aid of his Spirit to strengthen my 
 good desires, and subdue my propensities to evil ; for it is 
 from him that every good and perfect gift descendeth. My 
 custom is, to read four or five chapters of the Bible, every 
 morning, immediately after rising from bed ; it employs 
 about an hour of my time, and seems the most suitable 
 manner of beginning the day. Every time I read the Bi- 
 ble, I understand some passages, which I never understood 
 before." 
 
 Again, he writes to an association of young men in Bal- 
 timore, who had solicited his advice about books ; ^ " The 
 Bible is the book of all others to be read at all ages and in 
 all conditions of human life ; — not to be read once, or twice, 
 or thrice through, and then to be laid aside ; but to be 
 
 * Christian Register, vol. 17, p. 190. 
 
 2 
 
14 
 
 read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, 
 and never to be intermitted unless by some overruling ne- 
 cessity." 
 
 " The attentive and repeated reading of the Bible, in 
 small portions every day, leads the mind to habitual med- 
 itation upon subjects of the highest interest to the welfare 
 of the individual in this world, as well as to prepare him 
 for that hereafter to which we are all destined. It fur- 
 nishes rules for our conduct towards others in our social re- 
 lations. 
 
 " If all or any of you have spiritual pastors to guide you 
 in the paths of salvation, do not imagine that I am encroach- 
 ing upon the field of then* appropriate services ; — I speak as 
 a man of the world, to men of the world, and I say to you, 
 Search the Scriptures^ 
 
 " It had always been his delight," he said upon another 
 occasion, " to contemplate the rising and setting of the sun, 
 and to watch the silent and majestic procession of the stars. 
 This sublime vision filled his mind with ever new, elevatino- 
 and unutterable emotions. It was his usual custom, when 
 at home, to take his stand on a lofty hill near his house, ev- 
 ery pleasant morning and evening, as a spot from whence 
 he could catch the first golden beam of the sun as it emers-- 
 ed from the eastern sea, and the latest gleam of its glory as 
 it sank behind the western hills. There nothing could ob- 
 struct his survey of the whole visible hemisphere of the sky ; 
 and loosing his mind from the narrow enclosure of earth- 
 ly objects, he endeavored to realize the motion of the dobe 
 on which he stood, and of all the majestic spheres." As has 
 been beautifully inferred, « we may not wonder that a soul 
 familiar with such high experiences, and daily fresh from 
 communings with the heavenly spheres, (and we may add, 
 the word of God, and prayer,) should stand forth undaunted 
 in the halls of legislation, and unceasingly lift up his voice 
 
15 
 
 like a trumpet amidst the roar of battle for Liberty and 
 Right."^ 
 
 And this, finally, brings us to the crowning excellence of 
 his life he was a Christian Statesman, and sought to realize 
 a Christian Commonioealth. He identified religion with 
 public, as much as private conduct. He was not a jJoliti- 
 cian, in the bad sense, so often, unhappily, associated with 
 that word. His jiolic?/ was honesty ; his polity was rooted 
 and grounded in the principles of Christianity. He might 
 not always, as who does, come up in his conception and 
 practice to the standard of Christ, but that, all concede, was 
 his honest aim. One of the conversations reported of him 
 during the past year brings out this point with prominence. 
 I " I could see," said a friend who called upon him, " that 
 while his patriotic bosom is agitated with many fears, he 
 still cherishes a good old Puritan ' hope for the best,' from 
 the influence of the Bible and of general education in fos- 
 tering a love of justice and a true spirit of liberty." 
 
 " In conversation, he dwelt much on the importance of 
 bringing out the power of the Christian religion against 
 slavery. He says nothing else will answer, — no other prin- 
 ciple but the spirit of religion, and the power of conscience 
 can ever bring about the voluntary and peaceful emancipa- 
 tion of the slaves of this country. He watched with deep 
 interest every movement among religious bodies, which 
 tends to withdraw from slavery the evident countenance, or 
 at least the acquiescent endurance which the Churches have 
 long given to the institution." 
 
 It is most true, as has been said by an eloquent tongue,^: 
 " he was the champion of human rights not yet vindicated, 
 and which arc yet, for a long time, to agitate the world ; he 
 
 * Rev. Chandler Robbins, Christian Register, vol. 18, p. §. 
 t New-York Evangelist, 
 i Mr Dwight. 
 
16 
 
 led the van in the contest of liberty against slavery; — the fu- 
 ture history of the country is to be influenced, moulded, 
 formed, shaped, more by his spirit than by that of any other 
 man of the age." 
 
 " Charming was the silent student, the eloquent expoun- 
 der of the rights of man. Adams was, in living action, 
 their defender, champion, vindicator." 
 
 When the slaves of the ship Amistad had reconquered 
 by force of arms " their unalienable rights" to " life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness," and were exposed to the 
 danger of being dragged back again into all the hoiTors of 
 Spanish slavery, he stood forth voluntarily as their defender 
 in the Supreme Court of the United States, and gained 
 their cause by dint of the most powerful appeals to truth 
 and right and law. He had his reward. He labored for a 
 people whose gratitude is as proverbial, as then' wrongs. 
 When lying in the cold majesty of death in the Representa- 
 tive Hall of the republic, and the great, and the titled, and 
 the proud drew near to look once more on that " human 
 face divine," there came, too, the outcast race craving to 
 take a last look at their hero and friend, and no homage to 
 the mighty dead was more heartfelt than theirs, no tears 
 welled up from more grateful hearts. Well might he say, in 
 the words of Job, as has been already applied by another, 
 " Because I delivered the poor that cried, the fatherless and 
 him that had none to help him, — the blessing of him that 
 was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the wid- 
 ow's heart to sing for joy. I was eyes to the blind, and feet 
 was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and the cause 
 I knew not I searched out. And I brake the jaws of the 
 wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth." 
 
 He was a patriot in the largest and most blameless sense 
 of that word. He wished, and he lived, toiled and suffer- 
 ed, that his own country might be the joy and glory of the 
 whole earth ; that its name might be fragrant in every clime 
 
17 
 
 with justice and peace ; that it might dwell upon the grate- 
 ful tongues of the most distant generations, as the friend of 
 liberty and humanity, as " Time's noblest offspring," if not 
 " the last." Hence he strove as for his life, and had his 
 life been the forfeit, he would have striven the same, that 
 all manner of \\Tong might be righted, that the oppressed 
 might go free, that peace might wave her olive-branch over 
 the earth, that temperance, and education, and science, and 
 religion might here refine, and civilize, and Christianize a 
 great brotherhood of states, an empire of freedom from sea 
 to sea, a land of eternal righteousness, a great Christian 
 kingdom, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven. 
 Would that his example might inspire our statesmen to 
 aim for the right, not the expedient ; conscious that the 
 right always is the expedient in the end, and that the wrong 
 is always the weak and the frustrated at last, for this after 
 all is God's world ! Would that our young men might un- 
 derstand that " peace hath her victories no less renowned 
 than war ;" that the profoundest honor and the everlasting 
 fame belong, by the concession of men of all parties, all 
 sections of country, — and not least of that very quarter 
 against whose peculiar institutions, he shot all the light- 
 nings of his rebuke, and built up the immovable bulwark 
 of his opposition, — belong now and forever to him, who 
 was the soldier of the right, and who fought for the right, 
 though a whole country or a whole world might be up in 
 arms against him! 
 
 Mr Adams thus belonged to a class, of whom may heaven 
 send us more, that of Christian statesmen ; men, who carry 
 their private convictions of right into their public acts ; men, 
 who dare to do all that conscience dictates to be done, and 
 fear to do more ; men, who believe that Christianity was 
 meant for mankind, as well as for man ; for nations as well 
 as for individuals ; and that as the life of a person cannot 
 be established on any other basis of substantial prosperity 
 
18 
 
 and happiness, except that of right, truth, and love ; so can- 
 not that of a country except upon the same adamantine 
 rock ; that our commonweahhs should be Christian, and our 
 cities cities of God. 
 
 With his life lengthened beyond the allotted period, he 
 " came to his grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn 
 cometh in in his season." " Behold the Lord doth take 
 away the mighty man, the judge, and the prudent, and the 
 ancient, and the honorable man, and the counsellor, and the 
 eloquent orator." Here is no grief. Gratitude, not sorrow, 
 should be the chief emotion ; gratitude for what he was, 
 and did, and what he will ever be in the history of our 
 country and of freedom. The cup of blessing had been 
 filled for him to the very brim, so that another drop would 
 have made it run over. Deeds of pith and honor and 
 mark, words of power and right, a zealous and whole-souled 
 example of Christian and patriotic service, a holy consecra- 
 tion to the cause of humanity had swelled the outline of 
 his years to its perfect circumference, and nothing was left 
 undone. It was " the end of earth," its trials and disci- 
 pline, and he was " content." The Lord's appointment 
 was the servant's hour. In the words of one of his own 
 hymns,=^ 
 
 " Though walking through death's dismal shadCj 
 No evil will I fear; 
 Thy rod, thy staff shall lend me aid. 
 For thou art ever near." 
 
 And of another ;t 
 
 " Matter and mind, mysterious one. 
 
 Are man's for three score years and ten; 
 Where, ere the thread of life was spun? 
 Where, when reduced to dust again? 
 
 * Christian Psalter, 151. f Christian Psalter, 691. 
 
19 
 
 All-seeing God, the doubt suppress; 
 
 The doubt thou only canst relieve; 
 My soul thy Savior-Son shall bless. 
 
 Fly to thy Gospel, and believe." 
 
 And yet again ;^ 
 
 ) 
 
 ' Than, pilgrim, let thy joys and tears 
 
 On Time no longer lean; 
 But henceforth all thy hopes and fears 
 
 From earth's aflfections wean. 
 To God let votive accents rise; 
 
 With truth, with virtue live; 
 So all the bliss that Time denies, 
 
 Eternity shall give." 
 
 ♦ Christian Hymns, 561. 
 
S9 f 
 

 
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