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DISCOURSE 
 
 OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF THE 
 
 HON. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 IIoidc Street Baptist (El)urcl), 
 
 FEBRUARY 27, 1848. 
 
 By WILLIAM HAGUE, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 -♦ 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WILLIAM D. TICKNOR & COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCXLVIII 
 
E 311 
 
 
 Exchange 
 
 West. Ros. Hiet. Soc. 
 
 1916 
 
 
 11 n s T o n : 
 
 PRINTED BT FREEMAN AND BOLI.KS, 
 DEVONSHIR] 8TRE1 I 
 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 Job V. 26. 
 
 THOU SHALT COME TO THY GRAVE IN A FULL AGE, LIKE AS A 
 SHOCK OF CORN COMETH IN HIS SEASON. 
 
 This declaration of an Eastern sage, touching the 
 aspect of sublimity, beauty, and fitness which invests 
 the termination of a protracted, upright, and useful life, 
 is suggested to us by the last words of that venerable 
 man and renowned statesman, the intelligence of whose 
 death has cast a pall of gloom over this nation, and has 
 awakened in millions of hearts a sense of painful be- 
 reavement. He fell, struck by the hand of death in 
 the place of his own choice, in the hall of legislation, 
 in the service of his country ; and as he recognized the 
 stealthy, fatal stroke of the dread messenger who came 
 to summon him away, he had only power to express 
 his conviction of the fact by exclaiming, u This is the 
 last of earth — I am content." No similar event could 
 have produced a sensation so profound as this; the 
 business of Congress was suspended, the avocations of 
 common life throughout the city were interrupted, all 
 amusements ceased, all local and party feelings were 
 
merged in the general grief, and from the capitol to 
 the circumference of this country, one chord of patriotic 
 sympathy hath been touched and made to vibrate in 
 mournful response to the blow which has smitten down 
 a chief leader of the people, and has extinguished one 
 of the riding lights in our moral hemisphere. 
 
 It would not be right to allow such an occasion to 
 pass unimproved. It hath its voice. To give it then 
 a tongue, is wise in us. In this event God speaks. 
 Great men are his gifts. He raises them up to achieve 
 the purposes of his wisdom and his goodness. The 
 mind of capacious intellect, of great forecast, of nice 
 discernment, connecting the faculty of patient attention 
 to details with that of splendid philosophical general- 
 ization, illumined by varied knowledge, united to a 
 heart of tender sensibility and of lofty courage, endow- 
 ed with the love of truth, honor, rectitude, together 
 with well-balanced powers of conception and execution, 
 is one of the noblest objects of his creation ; and the 
 fitting combination of events to give it ample verge 
 and scope is all of his ordering. The removal of such 
 gifted men from the earth in the prime of life or in the 
 culmination of their manly strength, is often spoken of 
 in the sacred Scripture as a severe judgment on any 
 people ; as was the case when the Prophet of God 
 announced a nation's doom by the threatening, u The 
 Lord doth take away from Judah and Jerusalem the 
 stay and the stair, the judge and the prophet, the pru- 
 deni and the honorable man. the counsellor and the 
 eluquent orator ;" for then, it is added, "children shall 
 be their princes, ami the people shall be oppressed." 
 
When, therefore, we see a man, whom the people all 
 "delight to honor," in whose soul patriotism is an 
 essential element of his inner life, whose tastes and 
 gifts qualify him for high statesmanship, whose heart 
 maintaineth its integrity, who walks upon the heights 
 of power with serene self-command, who is unseduced 
 by flattery and undazzled b}^ bribes, who loves peace, 
 and yet recoils not from the strife of stormy passions 
 if the voice of duty call him to it, who blends with 
 stern gigantic powers a sweet childlike simplicity, — 
 when we see such a man preserved to his country 
 through times of trial, and yielding to her service the 
 ardor of youth, the strength of manhood, the maturity 
 of age, and at last, having passed beyond the bounds 
 which have been set to the career of a mortal race, 
 bowing cheerful assent to the majestic summons which 
 bids him away from the scenes of his toil to a higher 
 sphere of being, we cannot but acknowledge and adore 
 the Providence which so long spared him to the world, 
 and blessed his country with the priceless heritage of 
 his character. 
 
 Melancholy as is the day which brings home to a 
 nation's heart a sense of the loss sustained by the de- 
 parture of such a chieftain, yet the mind cannot long- 
 linger to pore over this aspect of the event. Recover- 
 ing from the first shock of surprise and grief, it is nat- 
 urally led to contemplate the moral sublimity of such 
 a death, and to admire that divine benignity which 
 ordered a termination of such impressive beauty to a 
 life so eminently instructive and useful. In the course 
 of nature everything is beautiful " in its season," the 
 
6 
 
 bud and bloom of Spring, the fall of the fruit in Au- 
 tumn, the garnering of the shock of corn full ripe. 
 So when the aims and purposes of life have been ful- 
 filled, when the exhausted faculties of the body fail 
 through weakness to obey the behests of the active 
 spirit, Death has the natural beauty which pertains to 
 fitness, because it is so seasonable ; because, however 
 suddenly it may come, it is nevertheless timely. 
 
 Although the history of the deceased Ex-President 
 is familiar to the public mind, a brief review of it will 
 be appropriate to the occasion. His native place is a 
 few miles from this city, in the town of Quincy, a part 
 of it which was formerly included within the bounds of 
 Braintree. He was born July 11th, 1767. In tracing 
 the course of one's life it is often found that some occa- 
 sion of early youth has quickened the whole emotive 
 nature, has given to the thoughts their chief direction, 
 and a permanent complexion to the character. One 
 event appears to have exerted so mighty an influence 
 on the mind of young Adams. This was the first pub- 
 lic reading of the Declaration of Independence, to which 
 he was a listener with rapt attention when a boy in 
 only the ninth year of his age, as he stood amidst a 
 crowd convened before the old Boston Stale House. 
 Its principles were congenial with the spirit of his 
 mindj and took immediate possesion of his heart. To 
 liim they were no vague abstractions 3 bu1 momentous 
 truths instinct with vitality and power. They were to 
 him ever afterward "the lively oracles"' of eternal 
 justice and true humanity, which awoke an echo in the 
 depths of lii- conscience ; they were the fundamental 
 
positions of all legitimate and righteous government, 
 essential to the peace of the world and the progress of 
 the race. He lived for these principles ; he felt that 
 to aid in giving them free course and effectual sway 
 was the main work committed to him, and to this great 
 aim he was found faithful unto death. 
 
 In the year 1778, before young Adams was eleven 
 years of age, he embarked for France, in company with 
 his father, who had been appointed a Commissioner to 
 the Court of Versailles, in order to obtain a recognition 
 of our National Independence. The drift of events 
 favored the design of this commission, so that Mr. 
 Adams and his son returned home the following year. 
 After the brief interval of two months, however, Con- 
 gress directed Mr. Adams to return to Europe, as 
 Minister Plenipotentiary, to treat for peace as soon as 
 Great Britain should become disposed to bring the war 
 to an end. Again, therefore, the father embarked for 
 a foreign land, taking with him his son John Quincy, 
 to whom a residence abroad under such auspicious 
 circumstances was of inestimable worth as a part of 
 his education, preparing him as it did to move with 
 ease, and to feel at home in the sphere of diplomacy, 
 wherein he afterwards yielded immense service to his 
 country. Two years after this period we find him in 
 Russia, acting as Secretary of Legation, under Mr. 
 Dana, Minister of the United States, to the Court of 
 St. Petersburg. It is evident that his mind was 
 keenly alive to the lessons which were suggested by 
 passing scenes ; for in a letter addressed to him by 
 his exceUent mother, in 1783, she takes occasion to 
 
8 
 
 say, " The account of your northern journey, and your 
 observation upon the Russian government, would do 
 credit to an older pen." In these extraordinary ad- 
 vantages conferred on one so youthful, it becomes us 
 to recognize the hand of Providence, training him up 
 for his great work of diplomatic statesmanship. The 
 stirring scenes through which he passed, the alarms 
 of war, the perils of the sea infested by armed foes, 
 the sublime aspects of nature which he contemplated, 
 the intellectual excitement of Paris, the political dis- 
 cussions which were then so keenly agitated, the con- 
 versations of Dr. Franklin, the constant care of a 
 venerated parent, all combined to invest him with 
 those rare influences which tended to quicken the 
 energies of his nature into a precocious yet healthful 
 development. At that early period he attuned his ear 
 to foreign languages, made himself acquainted with 
 European opinions, habits and manners, and cherished 
 in his heart a profound detestation of the vices and 
 the despotisms which exhaust the life of society in the 
 Old World. 
 
 Permitted by his father to return to Massachusetts, 
 in 1785, he entered the University of Cambridge, at 
 an advanced standing, and graduated in 1 787, at twenty 
 years of age. He immediately commenced the study 
 of law, under Chief Justice Parsons, of Newburypor^ 
 and entered upon his professional career in lie-ten, at 
 the end of the three years' course. 
 
 Aheiit four years from thai time, in 170.1, Mr. 
 Adams was appointed by President Washington, Resi- 
 dent Minister at' the Court el' the Tinted Netherlands. 
 
9 
 
 He remained in Europe, until 1801, employed in ex- 
 ecuting errands of diplomacy in England and Prussia, 
 and as a public Minister in Holland. In the character 
 of Foreign Ambassador, he enjoyed the confidence of 
 Washington, who paid him the tribute of the highest 
 praise for the skill and the success with which he dis- 
 charged his many trusts. 
 
 In the year 1802, Mr. Adams, having returned to 
 this country, was elected a Senator of Massachusetts, 
 and in the year following became a Senator in Congress. 
 In 1806, he accepted a Professorship of Rhetoric in 
 the University at Cambridge, and delivered a course of 
 lectures, which are now extant in a published volume. 
 He resigned his seat in Congress before his term ex- 
 pired, and in 1809, was nominated by Mr. Madison as 
 Minister to Russia. He was abroad during the last 
 war with England, and was one of the Commissioners 
 at Ghent, to negotiate a Treaty of Peace. 
 
 After having returned to this country, he became 
 Secretary of State under President Monroe, and was 
 the leading spirit of his administration. In the year 
 1824 he was elected President of the United States 
 by a vote of the House of Representatives. In that 
 exalted station he displayed the same high moral quali- 
 ties as had distinguished him in narrower spheres of 
 action. Divided as the people of this country were, by 
 feelings of the most impassioned partisanship, he rose 
 superior to them all ; no local or clannish prejudices 
 swayed his official appointments ; no man was placed 
 under the ban of proscription for his political senti- 
 ments, or for the open expression of- them ; liberty of 
 2 
 
10 
 
 thought and of speech were honored as inalienable 
 rights, as essential elements of a manly character ; and 
 it may he truly said that the administration of John 
 Quinct Ad aims adorns the annals of American histoiy, 
 and commends itself to the grateful remembrance of 
 future ages, as the realization of a lofty idea — even 
 of that pure, high-souled impartiality, which becomes 
 the chief magistrate of a nation, and which enters into 
 every just conception of the dignity that belongs to 
 that exalted office. 
 
 Having completed one presidential term, in 1829, 
 Mr. Adams returned to his home in Quincy, after nearly 
 forty years of active and arduous public service, which 
 had achieved most important results in the history of 
 our republic. But " his eye was not dim, nor was his 
 natural force abated." A mind like his could not rest 
 in indolence. The atmosphere of public life was as a 
 native element, and even its agitations habit had made 
 more congenial than quiet inactivity. In this he was 
 a wonder unto many. Just as the mariner who has 
 been educated to make his home upon the stormy dec \>. 
 although fortune may have blessed him with a quiet 
 retirement, cannot bring his tastes to harmonize with 
 the dull monotony, but welcomes again the excitement 
 of his ocean-life with all its toils and perils. — so the ven- 
 erable Ex-President, with a physical frame kept strong 
 by manly discipline and temperance, with a mind 
 whose joy was in activity, welcomed the scenes of 
 public service, the duties of legislation, and conferred 
 dignity on the office of the People's Represont.-itive by 
 accepting it after he had enjoyed the highest honors 
 
11 
 
 which his country could bestow, at a period when the 
 fires of ambition had ceased to burn, and when the 
 emoluments of place could offer no temptation. 
 
 But behold what a mighty and youthful energy he 
 carried into the execution of his duties ! The youngest 
 aspirant after fame and position could not have been 
 more studious, more punctual, more untiring, more 
 deeply interested in all the passing questions of the 
 day, or the great problems of the age, more keenly 
 sensitive to all the elements of life and stir around 
 him. What a noble spectacle did this eloquent old 
 man present when he took his place again in our na- 
 tional Congress, so enriched with all the lore of expe- 
 rience as well as of schools, universities, and courts, 
 acting his part in full sympathy with men of the second 
 and third generation after him, revered by men of every 
 state and party, the pride even of his opponents, con- 
 sidered as a man and a citizen ; now listened to with 
 mute attention whilst he poured forth the treasures of his 
 wisdom, and now again quelling the fury of angry pas- 
 sions when all bonds of restraint having been sundered, 
 they had been lashed into a fearful and overwhelming 
 tempest. It was a kind and wise Providence that 
 placed him there for good, and the devout Christian 
 patriot, while he admires the instrumentality, may well 
 exclaim, " It was thou God who didst cause the voice 
 of thy servant to be heard higher than the voice of 
 many waters, thou didst still the noise of their waves, 
 the noise of their waves and the tumults of the people." 
 
 Adhering rigidly to the habits of his youth even in 
 advanced age, rising early so as to give the first hours 
 
12 
 
 of the day to study and meditation, Mr. Adams pre- 
 served his mental faculties in all the vivacity of their 
 prime, and in the greatness of their strength. The 
 ambition of his last days was of a noble sort ; it was 
 to leave the field without putting off his armor ; to die 
 at his post, -to die as a faithful servant, "having his 
 loins girt and his lamp trimmed and burning." Above 
 all things he dreaded a life of indolence or useless- 
 ness. God favored his wish. It was fully realized. 
 While his mind was acting in the plenitude of his 
 powers, while his heart was throbbing with the pulsa- 
 tions of his wonted patriotism and his warm affections, 
 his exhausted frame gave way ; his spirit forsook its 
 earthly abode for that higher realm, where it may expa- 
 tiate forever in the light and bliss of immortality. 
 
 « His last days were his best." The lustre of his char- 
 acter increased more and more unto the end. It was not 
 for him in the retrospect of his course to appropriate 
 the sentiment which the great English poet has attri- 
 buted to a distinguished prime minister : 
 
 "Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
 I served my king, he would aol in mine age 
 Have left me naked to mine enemies." 
 
 The Ex-President served his country with a zeal which 
 never flagged, bri he served his God first of all; and 
 at last, when 1.- fell beneath the shaft of death, received 
 not only the free tributes of love ami honor from hifl 
 friends, hu1 the profound respect of his enemies, while 
 he Lefl a name to be embalmed in the memory ol a 
 nation. 
 
13 
 
 " His last days were his best." An interesting occa- 
 sion once brought this reflection to my mind with an 
 impression not to be erased. On the Fourth of July, 
 1843, having been invited to officiate as chaplain at the 
 Boston celebration of the national independence, I 
 repaired to the council-chamber of the City Hall half 
 an hour before the time for forming the procession. 
 While reclining alone near the window, the venerable 
 old man entered the room, and ere long, taking his seat 
 beside me began to converse with a childlike animation 
 and simplicity of manner. After touching on a few 
 reminiscences of the past, he exclaimed, " This is one of 
 the happiest days of my whole life. Fifty years expire 
 to-day since I performed in Boston my first public 
 service, which was the delivery of an oration to cele- 
 brate our national independence. After a half-century 
 of active life, I am spared, by a benign Providence, to 
 witness my son's performance of his first public service, 
 the delivery of an oration in honor of the same great 
 event." It was evident that his heart was full of reli- 
 gious gratitude, and even then the sentiment of my 
 text associated itself with his history, while his own lips 
 testified that he was the heir of its promise, " Thou 
 shalt come to thy grave in full age, like as a shock of 
 corn cometh in his season." 
 
 In endeavoring to make a just improvement of the 
 present occasion, several reflections suggest themselves. 
 
 1. Let us cherish a spirit of sincere gratitude to the 
 Almighty Giver of all good gifts, in that he raised up 
 for the service of our country and our age a princely 
 mind, so remarkably adapted to their necessities. If a 
 
14 
 
 line adaptation of means to ends prove design, then the 
 extraordinary fitness of Mr. Adams to meet the calls 
 of our infant republic, to occupy positions of delicacy 
 and of difficulty, and in his very youth to serve her 
 with success where the highest wisdom and experienced 
 skill were requisite, proves a beneficent design on the 
 part of God towards us as a people, and demands devout 
 thankfulness from us to the All-wise Designer and Dis- 
 penser of the benefit. It is only in the retrospect of a long 
 life that we can see such a blessing in its just lights, in 
 its true relations and proportions, so as to appreciate it 
 worthily. We need, as from an eminence, to take in a 
 broad view of the whole landscape of his life-history, in 
 order to understand the relative importance of the sphere 
 which he occupied, and the dignity of the ends which 
 he achieved. These are not clearly manifest while we 
 are in close proximity to a living character. No doubt, 
 while Washington was in daily contact with his coun- 
 trymen, there were many of sober mind, who thought 
 that if he were suddenly removed, some substitute 
 might be found, who could with equal success occupy 
 the vacant station. But now, when the history of that 
 age is fully before us, when we read it at a glance, 
 when the many elements which composed its intellect- 
 ual and moral forces are analyzed and distinguished, 
 we all acknowledge that Washington was without a 
 parallel ; that the world possessed no other who could 
 have stood in his place, could have wielded the moral 
 sceptre of his influence, and have fulfilled his glorious 
 mission to mankind. So. too, when we contemplate 
 I lie extraordinary education and political talents of 
 
15 
 
 that young man to whom Washington entrusted the 
 honor and welfare of his country in foreign courts, and 
 the bright career of the young American minister in 
 coping with the veteran diplomacy of European mon- 
 archies, we cannot but recognize a Divine hand in 
 ordering all the events of his previous life so as to 
 prepare him for the emergency, and to qualify him by 
 a perfect discipline for an elevated and perilous theatre 
 of action. 
 
 Again, when by a series of strange events the most dis- 
 cordant jealousies were brought into stern conflict, at the 
 capitol, when by the aggressions of the Slave Power, 
 even the right of Petition was denied, when the surges 
 of excited passion were threatening to sweep away the 
 established bulwarks of freedom, — who but he, uniting 
 in himself the fervor of youth and the obdurate pa- 
 tience of manhood, with the dignity of age and lofty 
 station, could have effectually checked their proud im- 
 petuosity, could have ruled the agitation of the most 
 fiery spirits, and called them to the sober considera- 
 tion of those great fundamental principles without 
 which all government is tyranny, and all liberty but a 
 name ? It was God who placed him there to guide 
 the whirlwind and direct the storm, to plead for truth, 
 law, right, justice, and humanity, and thus to " turn 
 back the battle to the gate." 
 
 2. Let us endeavor to honor and emulate that high- 
 souled rectitude and honesty of purpose wherein lay 
 the secret of his courage and his strength. However 
 much men might differ from him in judgment, they 
 confided in his sincerity and his truthfulness. He 
 
16 
 
 made up his mind in obedience to great principles ; he 
 followed where they led, and was bold to proclaim and 
 act out his own convictions. Sometimes he agreed 
 with one party, then with another ; yet he did not 
 moan to steer his course by the illusive lights of party 
 policy, but by the fixed eternal star of absolute truth. 
 For this one thing, his realization in actual life of a 
 stern republican virtue, the individuality of conscience, 
 let his name be ever fragrant, let his example be prized 
 by the remotest age as a rich moral legacy to the youth 
 of his own country, and to the friends of liberty 
 throughout the world. 
 
 Prominent among the features of his character was 
 his habitual confidence in the power, and in the final 
 triumph of truth : hence in the dark and trying day 
 he was not ashamed or afraid to be her champion, 
 whether he stood with many or with few. He had 
 faith in that saying of an ancient sage, which was first 
 uttered in the ears of a king : " Great is the truth and 
 stronger than all things; all the earth calleth upon 
 the truth and the Heaven blesseth it; all works shake 
 ;n id tremble at it, and with it is no unrighteous thing." 
 However feeble might be his voice, he felt that a right 
 and faithful testimony is never lost. No! thanks to 
 God, it can never die. It may be overborne, it may 
 be smothered by the hands of violence, it may si < m 
 to he lust amidst the din of strife and the clamor of a 
 crowd, but it .shall find responses in the deep recesses 
 of many souls, and there shall its echoes bo redoubled 
 and prolonged, until it break forth from other tongues, 
 and be caught uy by listening multitudes, and sent 
 
17 
 
 abroad like the voice of mighty thunderings, and the 
 sound of the trumpet of God in the ears of a con- 
 vinced and subject world. 
 
 3. It becomes us, too, in view of this occasion, to 
 open our minds to fresh impressions of the inestimable 
 worth of parental influence over the strongest minds, 
 in early laying the foundations of an enduring charac- 
 ter. It is said that, after the revolutionary war, when 
 the French officers were assembled to take leave of 
 the commander-in-chief, they desired an opportunity 
 to pay their respects to the mother of Washington. 
 This was granted to them at a public entertainment in 
 Petersburg, Virginia. Such was the effect produced 
 on their minds by her simple manners, her noble 
 bearing, and the power of her conversation, that as 
 she retired from their company, there was heard 
 amongst them the spontaneous expression of the senti- 
 ment, " No wonder that America has such a General, 
 since he had such a mother." And we may truly say 
 that, whosoever contemplates the spirit that animates 
 the history, and is breathed forth in the published 
 writings of that excellent woman, the mother of John 
 Quincy Adams, will be disposed to apply to the de- 
 ceased Ex-President, the expression of a similar senti- 
 ment. An accomplished lady, possessed of sterling 
 sense, looking through appearances to the reality of 
 things, governed by a lofty patriotism and high re- 
 ligious principle, she was capable of leaving the im- 
 press of her character on the mind of her son ; and it 
 is instructive to observe how strictly, even to the latest 
 age, he cherished the opinions, and exemplified the 
 
18 
 
 virtues which she inculcated on him during the period 
 of boyhood. The nicely adjusted system of action, the 
 untiring industry, the love of knowledge, the love of 
 country, the moral fearlessness, the contempt of fashion, 
 the simple tastes, the religious reverence which ap- 
 peared in him, were all embodied in her strongly- 
 marked character. 
 
 Apprehensive that her son's early residence abroad 
 might subject his heart to corrupting influences, she 
 seems constantly to write in view of that perilous 
 liability; and in a letter addressed to him while in 
 Paris, in the twelfth year of his age, she says, " 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 cross you in your infant 
 years, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless 
 child." 
 
 In another letter addressed to her son, in his four- 
 teenth year, she illustrates, with an eloquent energy, 
 the great duties which he owes to himself, his parents, 
 his country, and his God, and especially one lesson of 
 the first importance, that, " the only sure and perma- 
 nent foundation of virtue is religion." 
 
 At a later period she seeks to kindle in his soul a 
 generous love of freedom, and says, " Let your obser- 
 vations and comparisons produce in your mind an ab- 
 horrence of domination and power, the parent of slavery, 
 ignorance and barbarism, which places man upon a level 
 with his fellow tenants of the woods ; 
 
 "A day, an hoar, of \ irtuous liberty 
 b worth a whole eternity of bondi gi 
 
19 
 
 At a still later day she is found rousing in him a 
 spirit of devotion to his country, saying, " I hope you 
 will never lose sight of her interests ; but make her 
 welfare your study, and spend those hours which others 
 devote to cards and folly, in investigating the great 
 principles by which nations have risen to glory and 
 eminence ; for your country will one day call for your 
 services in the cabinet or field. Qualify yourself to 
 do honor to her." In looking at the portrait which 
 these letters present of the mother of Mr. Adams, it 
 is interesting to observe that its more delicate lights 
 and shades were reproduced in her son : a reflection 
 often suggested, and especially by the fact that, in- 
 haling as he did the spirit of the Revolution, he in- 
 herited from her a burning hatred against the govern- 
 ment of England as an oppressive power, which neither 
 the lapse of time nor the infirmities of age could 
 quench. 
 
 To mark the connection between great effects and 
 their obscure causes, to trace the mighty river which 
 bears a nation's wealth upon its bosom to the little rill 
 in the mountain-side that a man's hand may span, is as 
 quickening to the intellect as it is profitable to the 
 heart; and surely it is worthy of being remembered by 
 every American parent, that the solid and splendid 
 qualities which were developed in the life and charac- 
 ter of Mr. Adams, sprang up in the home of his child- 
 hood, and put forth their first bloom in the sunlight 
 of a Christian mother's influence. 
 
 4. Moreover, it is especially fitting at this time 
 that we should bear witness to the fact, and tell it to 
 

 20 
 
 our children, that those virtues, of which we have 
 spoken, were daily nourished by a firm faith in the 
 Christian revelation, and by a devout study of it as 
 the inspired Word of God. The sentiments which he 
 received on this subject in his youthful years he often 
 subjected to the test of scrutiny, but never abandoned. 
 He clung to them as the light of life and the hope of 
 glory. While acting as American Minister at the 
 Court of Russia, he wrote a series of letters to his 
 children. They were never published ; they exist only 
 in manuscript, and several years since I was permitted 
 to peruse a copy of them. It is interesting to notice 
 how earnestly he commends to them the habitual study 
 of the sacred Scriptures, and how reverently he appeals 
 to them on any question whereof they profess to speak. 
 Whether we should agree with, or differ from his inter- 
 pretation of particular passages, it would be impossible 
 to read these letters without bearing away a deep im- 
 pression of the fact, that the writer was seeking to 
 derive his religious opinions, not from the creeds of a 
 church, or from the wisdom of men, but from the sim- 
 ple Word of God's own inspiration. 
 
 In the realm of religion, as well of ethics and poli- 
 tics, he thought for himself ; and yet, like the poet 
 Milton, desired to slake his thirst for knowledge at 
 
 " Siloa's brook, which Sowed 
 Fasl by the oracle of God." 
 
 He was not content with a moral philosophy; he 
 sought a vital Christianity, lie has been known to 
 urge on others with great force of thought and expres- 
 sion, that view of the nature dt' sin which philosophy 
 
 
21 
 
 cannot impart, and which the mind cannot apprehend, 
 except by seeing it as the transgression of a divinely- 
 revealed Law, invested with God's awful and eternal 
 sanctions. His hope of immortality sprang from no 
 self-complacent trust in his personal merits, but in the 
 grace of the Gospel, and is well expressed in a stanza 
 of his own : 
 
 " My last great want, absorbing all, 
 Is, when beneath the sod, 
 And summoned to my final call, 
 The Mercy of my God." 
 
 Mourning, as does the nation at this time, " as one 
 mourneth for a friend," it is a joy to us that this la- 
 mented patriot and chief has left, throughout the whole 
 circle of his social and domestic relations, a reputation 
 so unblemished, a name so dear to friendship, an exam- 
 ple so munificent, as a heritage to the youth of his 
 native land. Of the acts of his political life different 
 opinions will be entertained according to the points of 
 view from which they shall be regarded ; yet we doubt 
 not that the more closely his character and course shall 
 be studied, and considered as a whole, the more evi- 
 dent will it appear that some parts of his public con- 
 duct which have been attributed to a reasonless caprice, 
 were dictated by those high, unbending principles 
 of action which are far superior to the common-place 
 maxims of mere worldly prudence, and which, when 
 announced, command the homage of every conscience. 
 He has sunk beneath the weight of years, but the 
 regret awakened by his death is like that which fol- 
 lows the man who is cut off in the midst of his days, 
 and whose work remains unfinished. May those who 
 
22 
 
 are touched with sadness by the late intelligence of 
 his death, strive to imitate all that in him was noble 
 and " of good report," and then, 
 
 " The cloud that wraps the present hour 
 Will serve to brighten all our future life." 
 
 J\ 
 


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