BAC/.U 
 ddress at the Funeral of the Rev. DR. Not 
 
 i 
 
 Hi
 
 AT THE FUNERAL OF THE 
 
 REV- DR, NOTT. 
 
 SCHENECTADY, FEBRUARY 2, 1866; 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 
 BY Tin; 
 
 REV. J. TRUMBULL BACKUS, D.D. 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE USE OP THE FAMILY.
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE FUNERAL OF THE 
 
 EEY. DE. NOTT, 
 
 SCHENECTADY, FEBRUARY 2, 1866, 
 
 IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 
 BY THE FA8TOB, 
 
 REV. J. TRUMBULL BACKUS, D. D, 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE USE OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 PRESS OF WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK, 
 
 113 FCLTOX STREET. 
 
 1866.
 
 LIBPARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SA.YIA BARBARA 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 THIS occasion makes its own impressions. The 
 silent power of these preparations for the grave, with 
 their sad and tender associations for us all, is more 
 eloquent than could be the most fervid human utter- 
 ances. It is the voice of God to His mortal creatures. 
 
 We look upon this coffin, and think of him whom 
 we have known and revered for these long years, so 
 great, so potent as he was. But lie is not there, the 
 tabernacle is bereft of its glory. That which gave 
 such power to his eye, such expressiveness to his face, 
 such grandeur and command to that form, the spirit, is 
 no more here. It has returned to God. 
 
 And we, with hearts full of the high interest and 
 value of his life, gathered about that in its grave 
 dress which was he, where for so long he has 
 been wont to stand between the living and the dead 
 and proclaim salvation, on the spot whence so often he 
 distributed and enforced the sacramental emblems,* let 
 us all receive from that awful repose one more impres- 
 
 Dr. Nott had been accustomed for many years to take part with the pastor 
 in the administration of the Lord's Supper.
 
 sion upon his favorite theme of death and eternal life. 
 As he was laboring down to the river now passed, he 
 said (not consciously), " I will preach." And doth he 
 not preach to us beyond all the matchless oratory of 
 his best days 3 He, who could so impressively express 
 himself upon the grave and retribution, that he might 
 commend to mortal men Him who through death de- 
 stroyed the power of death and delivered them, now 
 himself of the dead, and on his way to the sepulchre, 
 preaches his last, his farewell sermon to his pupils, to 
 his co-laborers in pulpit and college, to his fellow- 
 Christians and fellow-sinners. We may no more hear 
 his voice, nor look upon his venerable presence ; but 
 his unwonted silence and stillness, the strange indiffer- 
 ence to us, his sorrowing friends, have such a heart- 
 breaking power, such a divine solemnity of appeal ! 
 Holy Spirit, preach Thou to every one here through 
 these memories of him who is to preach no more; 
 make the living lay to heart this day's lesson of Divine 
 Providence. 
 
 To others it shall be left, and on more fitting occa- 
 sion, to remind this community of what he was to them 
 from of old ; how he labored for their melioration and 
 welfare in all respects ; how every concern of moment 
 to this locality enlisted his generous, far-seeing zeal, 
 (from the very shade trees which relieve and adorn 
 our streets, all through the gradations of municipal
 
 and social life, up to the establishment of the school, 
 and the endowment of the college) ; how thus, for a 
 period of sixty years, he has been of material and pe- 
 
 * 
 
 cuniary advantage beyond any other instrumentality 
 to our city. 
 
 Let it be told by others what his relation has been 
 to the important educational record of this, his adopted 
 State ; what essential influence he exerted toward the 
 inception of our common school system ; how unselfish 
 and noble he was in regard to the interests of the 
 sister colleges of the Commonwealth, and how worthily 
 he fulfilled the trusts reposed in him for them. 
 
 Let it be for others to portray his public spirit, his 
 sympathy with all philanthropic enterprises, his sin- 
 gular readiness always to do and to endure for what- 
 ever proposed relief of the poor, the oppressed, or the 
 afflicted, for any real melioration of man. 
 
 All this, and such as this, has to be told, and will be 
 again and again repeated in just eulogy. Confident 
 are we that, when his life and influence are recorded by 
 well-informed, competent, and congenial spirits, (impar- 
 tially, Christianly recorded), it will be so rich in inci- 
 dent, so extraordinary in its facts, so demonstrative 
 of greatness and goodness in its subject, that the world 
 will more than ever take knowledge of him, and honor 
 his memory. 
 
 But our hearts and memories do not need that, here
 
 and now. To the relation between his life and religion, 
 therefore, we will at present restrict ourselves ; and in 
 trying to tell how he began, how he was disciplined, 
 and how he finished, we will determine what his real 
 life was, and what should be our estimate of it. 
 
 Looking back nearly a century, we see a little boy 
 of not yet four years, leaning on his mother's knee, 
 gazing with his bright eyes into her fond face, while 
 she instructs him. The lesson is, " Fear God, and keep 
 His commandments." Already the child has com- 
 mitted most of the English version of the Psalms, and 
 very many besides of the grand old renderings of them 
 by Sternhold and Hopkins. What must have been the 
 religious influence of a mother, unusually wrapt up in 
 her precocious son, as she seems to have been, and so 
 devoted to his religious welfare, as this fact implies ? 
 The mother * was a gifted woman, as well as fervently 
 pious. She was also, for the times, unusually well edu- 
 cated and accomplished ; and she put in requisition all 
 her resources to obviate the disabilities of poverty for 
 the mental and religious culture of the son. She heard 
 him read the Bible entirely through, ere he was four 
 years old. From her he derived his first and finest 
 impressions in that art of elocution for which he be- 
 came so distinguished (as he often said) ; herself his 
 only model and critic in that which some supposed to 
 
 * Mrs. Stephen Nott was a daughter of Col. Samuel Selden, of Lynn, Conn.
 
 be the artificial result of a very different schooling, 
 but with which she had imbued him till it became a 
 second nature. He said of her: "The light of my 
 young life went out when my mother died ; " and, to 
 appreciate this fully, we must have in mind how more 
 than ordinaiy was the relation of that mother and son ; 
 that she was to him companion, as well as counselor, 
 playmate, as well as teacher and mother. He never 
 had any child's society. The reverses of the family 
 compelled him to work regularly on the little farm 
 before he was nine years old, and, though his thirst for 
 knowledge was insatiate, precluded his studying by 
 day. So at night after toil, his mother sympathiz- 
 ing and aiding, the boy was learning and labor- 
 ing at that early age. That faithful, loving mother 
 died when he was fifteen, but not before her work 
 for his soul had been well done. He could not 
 remember when he began to fear and love God, be- 
 cause (we presume) at a very early period his heart 
 was turned to the way of salvation. But the effect 
 upon him of her loss, terrible as was the affliction, 
 seems to have been to seal upon his heart the lessons 
 of her pious care, and induce him publicly that year to 
 profess religion, and ultimately to devote himself to the 
 holy ministry. 
 
 Dr. Nott was ever and eminently reverent and 
 awe-struck in the contemplation of death. It did
 
 not seem to be an ordinary fear of dying. It was 
 rather a fearful impression of death's remorseless in- 
 difference to human plans and hopes ; a dread, as of an 
 enemy whose dire power to bereave he had sorely 
 tried. His mother's decease was the great trial of his 
 child-life, and at an age when perhaps it is most hard 
 to bear. It doubtless left a deep scar upon his heart. 
 Do we not perceive the effect all through his after life ? 
 There was another such impression, when at thirty 
 years of age he, the gifted and widely honored pastor of 
 an Albany charge, at a time when to be so placed and 
 honored was to be the religious monitor of the chief 
 men in our State and nation, the friend and associate 
 of persons whose fame has since been world-wide. In 
 that experience of care and responsibility and severe 
 pressure upon the brain and the heart, (such as led 
 himself to say that he could hardly have lived through 
 it long,) he relied exceedingly upon his gifted and 
 devoted wife.* He had never thought (he said) that 
 she would die. Yet remorseless death came again, and 
 blotted out the brightness of his home, and bowed him 
 how deeply ! The tradition of this bereavement and 
 its mournful effects lingered in that city through an- 
 other generation. Is it only an imaginary conviction, 
 that this new and severe lesson accounts, in no small 
 
 * She was a daughter of Rev. Joel Benedict, of Plainfield, Conn., with whom 
 Dr. Nott completed his preparation for college, and afterward studied theology, 
 while acting as the Principal of Plainfield Academy.
 
 degree, for that peculiar tone which characterized his 
 after religious life, and preaching the prominence of 
 such thoughts and themes ? 
 
 Then there was a third stage in this singular 
 experience and its effects. It occurred much later 
 in life. Never can it be forgotten by those who 
 were immediately cognizant of it. An entire com- 
 
 i 
 
 munity was thrown into the deepest sympathy of 
 grief by the death of his only daughter.* She 
 had made his home so bright, so like it of old, when 
 her mother was its gladness. No doubt he had com- 
 forted himself with the confidence that it would be for 
 him ever so to his end. No one could mistake the 
 potency in that ever-to-be-remembered loving influ- 
 ence. But it was not to continue. Again came 
 remorseless death, and threw his pall over the bright- 
 ness of that home. The blow was severe beyond 
 description, but he met it like a Christian, f The sub- 
 
 * She was the wife of Rev. Alonzo Potter, D.D. andLL.D.. then Vice-Presi- 
 dent of Union College, afterward the distinguished prelate of the Episcopal 
 diocese of Pennsylvania. 
 
 f Extract from a letter written by Dr. Nott under the influence of that 
 grief: 
 
 * * * "Nothing could have been more sudden and unexpected than 
 the death of my daughter, and nothing to me or mine more distressful . Few 
 people live who are bound together with more tender ties than those which 
 bound her to via especially to me. I had hoped to lean on her as I descended 
 toward the grave, and to hear her voice and feel the support of her hand on 
 my bed of death. But I have been called to build her tomb, and she not 
 mine. Her departure has left a mighty void in my heart, and there remains a 
 sense of desolateness which must be abiding. It is a wreck that cannot be 
 repaired. No other stroke could so have crushed my hopes and joys. But I
 
 10 
 
 limity of that grief cannot be described. Without 
 sternness, without bitterness or murmuring, without 
 distrust of God; but such an appalling power it 
 implied of death, such a renewal was it of his earlier 
 experiences. 
 
 This, and such as this, was his discipline from God ; 
 as it seems to me, made means of grace, more than 
 any others of his varied trials to prepare him to 
 die the death of the righteous ; and probably giving 
 its peculiar tone to his religious experience, and to his 
 public discourses. At any rate, whatever the cause, a 
 prominent characteristic in his preaching, and of his 
 religious life, was this sense of the fearfulness of death. 
 His sermons abounded in it ; and thoughtful minds 
 were sure to witness its manifestations in the freedom 
 of social intercourse. Remarkably cheerful and felici- 
 tous as he was in society, alive always to the interest w 
 
 feel, and from the first have felt, that the arm of God inflicted it. I do not wish, 
 I have not wished, the decision altered. I have a strong conviction on my mind 
 that Maria was prepared to die. She had been ripening for heaven, and I trust 
 was ripe for it. If so, our loss is her gain ; and if we truly loved her, therefore, 
 in place of sorrowing, we should rejoice. It is difficult to carry the truths of 
 the gospel out in practice. The want of faith embarrassed even Christ's 
 disciples. 
 
 " If they had little faith, what may be said of us ? It is hard to learn that 
 this is not our rest, and hence loss, follows loss till the weary, bereaved pilgrim 
 finds that no prop is left on earth to lean upon. There is nothing left so dear 
 to me as the child which God has taken. But it is God who has taken her. If 
 she were borne away into exile, there would be a sore pang at the recollection 
 of departure. But she has gone home to her Father's house, and there I hope 
 presently to meet her. My remaining journey will indeed be less cheerful 
 than it would could I have continued to enjoy the solace of her company. 
 Still the end will not be less joyful because she has gone before me." o o o o
 
 11 
 
 of passing events, active and earnest in regard to duties 
 and efforts for the immediate present, nothing seemed 
 more natural and necessary than to recur to those other 
 thoughts and feelings. 
 
 The grand aim of Dr. Nott's life would seem to have 
 been the melioration of men according to the spirit of 
 the gospel. This simple idea of a renewed, a Christian 
 heart, with its Puritan associations, (may we not say its 
 Puritan essentials?} of education, freedom, and frater- 
 nity, affords the clue for a fair unfolding of this remark- 
 able life. We make no claim for him of sinless disin- 
 terestedness, or of perfect freedom from the infirmities 
 of our humanity. No one could pray as he did, apart 
 from a painful sense of his own imperfections and sins. 
 No one arrogated less for himself in such respects than 
 he. Yet this grand aim of a truly Christian mind was his, 
 by the grace of God. He had originally experienced 
 it through his mother's pious care. It had been inten- 
 sified through those disciplinary familiarities with 
 death to which we have alluded. And it was evident to 
 his latest life. Therefore he so dreaded out-living his 
 power to be at work. Therefore he so felt the obliga- 
 tion to do with his might while the day lasted. 
 And so it was, that the blow which laid him aside 
 from active life a few years since found him, though 
 really an infirm old man, harder than ever at work, 
 resolutely, almost perversely bent upon doing his
 
 12 
 
 utmost so long as lie could. All his invention, his 
 pressure of secular care, his marked sagacity in deal- 
 ing with men, and such other things, which we asso- 
 ciate with him, had been forced 'upon him by the 
 circumstances besetting the working out of his grand 
 aim. 
 
 Just threescore and ten years ago he came first to 
 this State. He came in a missionary spirit, fired with 
 the noble aim referred to. In his Puritan associations 
 the school and the church kept company. Knowledge 
 and religion were properly twin sisters, real science 
 and real revelation never at variance. And throughout 
 
 o 
 
 his long and admired career he has diligently pursued 
 this aim in this spirit. He has endeavored to instill it 
 into all others. He has striven to impress it, with its love 
 of truth as truth, its regard for duty as duty, its candor, 
 catholicity, and all magnanimity, upon the young. 
 Did time permit, it would be pleasing to dilate upon 
 these aspects of the character and life, which his friends 
 so love to dwell upon. Were I to choose a single 
 expression of all these social characteristics of our Hon- 
 ored Dead, it would be that he was remarkably supe- 
 rior to all the littlenesses of human selfishness. He was 
 truly a magnanimous man, because his natural noble- 
 ness of spirit was informed and aggrandized by 
 fear of God; and it was this character, which so 
 adapted and signally empowered him as the educator
 
 13 
 
 and governor of youth. It is well said that " he gov- 
 erned the college by his prayers." But it was the 
 praying of this sort of man ; of one who sympathized 
 with the young men ; of one who forgot not his own 
 need of grace when he dealt with the erring, forgot 
 not the sweetness and power of home, when he prayed 
 for, or watched over his pupils, forgot not his own 
 bitter experiences, when poor or discouraged students 
 were to be aided and cheered on their way. When 
 others would counsel harshness of discipline, when rash 
 youth had been overborne by temptation, he never 
 ignored his Divine Master's tender interest for the 
 young, never failed to remember that the Lord, and 
 the servant, had a mission of love, to "seek and 
 to save the lost." And master of all the powers of col- 
 lege strategy though he was so beyond compare, 
 detecting, preventing, and rectifying evil and mischief 
 with an almost superhuman faculty, he was furthest 
 possible from the spirit of a mere and harsh inquisitor 
 or tyrant. He aimed to be a father and friend of every 
 young man, good or bad, and his pupils, consciously or 
 not, felt it, and loved him. So his magnanimity, even 
 more than his skill and power, governed them. And 
 therefore it was so : " Dr. Kott governed Union Col- 
 lege by his prayers." 
 
 There was one characteristic of this beloved man, of 
 essential affinity with his grand aim, a vital part of it,
 
 14 
 
 which I hazard nothing in styling the crowning 
 glory of his character and life. He was pre-eminently 
 and unreservedly a Peacemaker. Wonderfully here he 
 made one feel, always, that he was an exceeding good 
 and great man. The chief element in this excellence 
 was his own forgiving spirit. For a third of a century 
 one, who has been perhaps as free to intrude upon him 
 as any other, and as fully possessed of his temptations 
 to bitterness, censoriousness, and uncharitableness, 
 with whom he conferred so unreservedly, and expressed 
 himself so unguardedly, that a glimpse of the wrong 
 spirit would have been had, if indulged, and that 
 witness here testifies, if ever there was in mere man 
 the nobleness of a thoroughly and invariably forgiving 
 spirit, it characterized our departed Friend and Father. 
 He talked freely of matters, in regard to which it was 
 notorious that his sense of justice and honor had been 
 cruelly outraged. But never did unchristian harshness 
 of expression escape him. With such a spirit, what a 
 power he had as a peacemaker ! He, who always so 
 truly prayed, " Forgive us as we forgive those who have 
 sinned against us," could, and habitually did, throw 
 himself, often with most benign effect, between oppos- 
 ing partisans in Church and in State. To many a furious 
 .und ruinous discord he has effectually said, " Peace, be 
 still." In how many a social, and even in the more un- 
 manageable domestic feud, has he gracefully and ten-
 
 15 
 
 derly interposed, bringing order and rest out of confu- 
 sion and wrath. Most of that record is, of course, only on 
 high. But enough of him is well known, and reverently 
 felt, as to the loveliness and power of this spirit, to 
 assure us that all the glory and the good is his of that 
 saying of our Lord : u Blessed are the peacemakers, for 
 they shall be called the children of God." 
 
 The immediate expectation of death is usually a 
 severe test of man ; and Dr. Nott has been conscious of 
 that condition for years. Since 1860 he has felt that he 
 was within a momentary summons to go hence. During 
 much of this protracted period of awaiting and expect- 
 ing, he has been enough himself to discriminate 
 clearly, and cautiously consider, his prospects. Clouds 
 and apprehensions would sometimes intervene ; but 
 always there was reverent, cordial submission to the 
 Divine will, and for the most part a sweet, humble, 
 child-like fearlessness of trust and hope. It was the 
 manifestation of a true, soul-sustaining Christianity ; 
 and a demonstration of his sincerity, an interpretation 
 of his life beyond all scope for cavil or doubt a price- 
 less testimony to the covenant faithfulness of God. 
 How sad it was to witness the waning of that noble 
 spirit, to be so premonished all these weary months 
 and years that he was passing away ! Yet how blessed 
 the assurance accorded to us, made more and more full 
 at every new stage of his progress homeward, that he
 
 16 
 
 was trusting unwaveringly in that grace of God, which 
 had cared for him from infant life. He was ever to 
 the end a little child before God, most pleased to sit 
 at Jesus' feet, and confiding firmly, gratefully, in 
 the sovereignty and loving-kindness of his gracious 
 Lord. In his dying hours, when he felt that the end 
 could not be afar, his parting counsel and legacy to his 
 nearest friend was, " Fear God, and keep His com- 
 mandments ;" the counsel and legacy of his mother to 
 himself, which had begun and controlled his entire 
 religious life. When utterance was difficult, the spirit 
 only not gone, he said : " One word, one word Jesus 
 Christ ! " And the last, the very last exclamation from 
 his lips was : " My covenant God ! " Blessed, beloved 
 man ! These precious remains we will deposit tenderly 
 in their appointed resting-place, the grave made honor- 
 able and sure, because under watch and ward of Him 
 who is " the Kesurrection and the Life." Remorseless 
 death may seem to have dominion. But it is only a 
 seeming. Thou, sainted Friend and Father, thyself art 
 in another sphere and rest, in the home of God, in " the 
 house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." We 
 will think of thee hereafter as denizen of the brighter, 
 better country, knowing even as also thou art known, 
 refined of all dross, purged of all sin, released from 
 all care, at home in the joy of thy Lord. " There the 
 wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at 
 rest."
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 Series 9482