EULOGY BY REV. DR. IDE.
If there is any special fitness in inviting me to speak on this occasion, it lies in the fact that Dr. Powell was an intimate friend of mine. Outside of the circle of my own home, there was no one with whom I ever held such close and familiar relationship as with him. Our acquaintance began in the early days of college life, when our nation was in the throes of a civil war. We were not members of the same class, but were brought together quite frequently through the literary society to which we both belonged. During this period our relations were simply cordial. Unconsciously the advice of that witty old divine, Thomas Fuller, was being followed: "Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath."
Dr. Powell graduated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1866, while my graduation took place the previous year, in the class of 1865. My first year out of college was spent in teaching in my native town. When the decision was reached of entering the Theological Seminary, it was mutually agreed that we should go to Andover and room together. From that time on our intimacy grew apace. We passed three years together as chums; but that relation did not cease when we separated and each went his own way to the field of labor where the Lord had appointed. The last letter that I received from him, (and I have been informed that it was the last letter that he ever wrote, which reached me only the day before the despatch that apprised me of his death), began in that same old familiar fashion, "My dear Chum." I have thus made reference to matters somewhat personal, that the standpoint from which I speak may be more clearly understood. I have "summered and wintered him;" I have been permitted to know him within and without; I have been with him in season and out of season; I have studied with him; I have prayed with him; I have loved him as a brother.
It is more in accord with the promptings of my heart to speak a few words suggested by intimacy and long acquaintance with Dr. Powell. Many learned to respect and honor him through the abundance of his labors in the broad field to which God in his providence called him for service. But there is another side to that life, private, personal, even more attractive and richly suggestive to those who knew him best and were permitted to enjoy his friendship.
Our brother did not possess the conventional qualities which sometimes are associated with the "cloth." He was without that endless gravity which could almost fittingly grace a pedestal. That pious deacon who had not "snickered" for above forty years, would have found his moral sensitiveness somewhat disturbed by the free, untrammelled way in which he spoke and acted. There was no monotony in his make-up. He was natural—natural as devoid of all cant and affected airs. When you met him, you had not come upon some person trumped for the occasion; it was Powell, the very man you wanted to see. He could not be anything but himself. Genuineness and unaffected simplicity were revealed in him, as in few others. He could be as serious as a country judge; but he was serious because the matter was in him, and it was the hour for seriousness. He could be as playful as a child, but it was because the play was in him and it was time for play. When our brother was pastor of the North Church, in Newburyport, it was our custom to meet every Monday morning in Boston. On one occasion, a brother-in-law of mine, a boy in his teens, accompanied me to Boston, where we were to meet Mr. Powell. We soon found ourselves tramping about the city on errands. Mr. Powell was effervescing with fun. At such seasons, and they were very frequent, he took great pleasure in making me the victim of his frolicsomeness. On this occasion, I found that Mr. Powell had enlisted the boy in the scheme of hiding away from me every chance they could get. Passing through a crowd, I would look around and discover that they had absconded; and then it devolved on me to hunt them up, I never shall forget how this manoeuvering interested that boy. He came up to me and whispered the first opportunity he had, "He is the funniest minister that I ever saw in my life." That was his first visit with Mr. Powell, but it was not the last. On that day an attachment was formed which has lasted through all these years. A little boy, four years old, in Oak Park, where Mr. Powell resided for some time, was asked by his father, what he wanted to do when he got to be a man, and answered: "Be a minister and go hunting like Mr. Powell." He was a man for the boys. He touched a responsive chord in their nature. He could enjoy what they enjoyed with as keen a relish as they themselves.
He was the very soul of friendship; he had a genius for it. The friends that he made are only limited by the want of personal contact with him. In the making of them it may be said "He came, he saw, he conquered." How wide he opened his arms to receive us! There were no partition walls to be levelled before we approached him. It required no studied effort to get at him. The way was always clear; the door was without a latch-string even; it was open. You never had to ask, Is Mr. Powell in a proper mood to see his friends to-day? Why, it was worth a journey of fifty miles just to meet that man and receive a grasp of his hand! I remember going to a depot in Chicago to meet him as he came in on the train. As soon as he singled me out from the crowd, he rushed towards me, exclaiming in his bantering way: "Well, well, well, this is the first sensible thing I ever knew you to do, come on old fellow;" and he grasped my arm and hurried me away, saying, "I am just glad to see you." When it is said, that he is the "best beloved of all," is it not because he first loved us? The generosity and friendliness of his soul captured our hearts. I imagine that many thousands of dollars were poured into the treasury of the A.M.A. evoked by the love kindled in hearts for our brother. Men came to love the cause through him who loved them.
Mr. Powell was a man of enthusiasm; he worked at white heat. The logic of his whole life seemed to be, "What I do I must do quickly." He could not stop; he must hurry on. He could pass easily from one thing to another. In all the years of my acquaintance with him I never knew him to rest as other people rest. If his body was not active his mind was. The river of his life had no sluggish intervals; it was a torrent from first to last. His step was a bound; his thought rushed in its movement. He could write a sermon in less time than any other man in the seminary, so far as I know. Plans came to him like an inspiration and were unfolded with a rapidity that seemed to me wonderful. His scholarship was not technical. He always enjoyed the larger sweep of things. He would have been the last man to devote his life to the Greek preterite, and to question whether it would not have been better to have confined himself to the dative case! Such minutiae of erudition might be fascinating to others; it was not for him. His large-heartedness, his sympathy, his wealthy and generous spirit could not be condensed into a bookworm, or a recluse. They rather equipped him to become a watchman, that he might declare what he saw. He needed the whole Republic to range up and down in. His ringing words might be heard on our Western frontier; but before their echoes had scarcely died away, their wakening notes might be taken up and reiterated on our New England coast. He was a voice crying in the land. Like the Great Master, he was sent to "heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised." It was the down-trodden races for which he lived. Such a candle of the Lord would burn down to its socket before the day was half spent. Such hot haste and burning zeal must consume to ashes before the meridian is turned.
Oftentimes have I thought of our brother in connection with a remark once made by Rufus Choate. Mr. Choate was an over-worked man, and in his later years, the tension under which he was laboring was quite apparent. He was met by a friend on the street one morning who reminded him of his careworn appearance. Said his friend, "Your labors are too unremitting, and what is worse, you are endangering your constitution." "Ah!" said Mr. Choate, "my constitution was gone long ago; I am living on the by-laws now." In the last years of his life, it seemed to me that our brother was living on the by-laws of his constitution.
He was aware that but a brittle thread kept his earthly moorings; but this did not deter him; he must work while the day lasted; for the night cometh when no man can work. While the vital spark remained, he would not, indeed we may say, he could not stay his hand. And so in the midst of his years God took him.
What a privilege to have walked with him in the fellowship of love, and to have enjoyed the richness and fullness of his friendship! What springs of tenderness in his nature ready to gush forth to refresh and quicken the tendrils of a drooping heart. How the sorrows of others found echo and response in his own soul. The grim messenger death once entered my own home, and made all a desert and a desolation. I never can forget the letter that I received from our brother at that time. What melting tenderness and sympathy were expressed in it! He was smitten and afflicted; he was wounded and bruised for my sake. It was as if he was the stricken one and not myself. But I could not account, however, at the moment, for the blotted and blurred appearance of the writing. But it was all explained in a postscript. "Please excuse the writing. I could not keep the tears back; they fell so thick and fast as nearly to destroy the legibility of my letter." How can we help loving such a man? He took up the sorrows of others and made them his own; aye more, he took up the woes of a race and made them his own. When did the colored man have a better and more faithful friend than he? Who was more completely and absolutely identified with his interests than he? Burn down the colored man's school house through the malign influence of caste feeling, and you had kindled in his soul the fires of an indignation which quite eclipsed the original conflagration.
I have been permitted to observe the advancement and development of his faith. As the years carried him forward in his course, that faith assumed stronger as well as more graceful and beautiful outlines. He was not one who never had doubts or questionings. The difficulties of belief as well as unbelief, were not unknown to him. But when he took up the mighty task to which he consecrated his life, and was left to grapple with illiteracy, superstition and the needs of a benighted and down-trodden people, knotty questions in theology no longer vexed him, for he recognized that there was but one all-sufficient solvent for the dark problems which thrust themselves into the foreground, and that was the redemptive power of the Gospel of Christ. Men may be puzzled and perplexed concerning the theory of sunshine, but there are no questionings on the subject that can override the practical effect of the sun. The sun shines in spite of our metaphysics! Our brother advanced into the practical aspects of faith, and had the assurance that Christ was the light of the world, in spite of our theories of inspiration.
He had an unbounded faith in applied Christianity. There was nothing it could not do in the way of recasting and uplifting the despised peoples of the land. We had but to go forward in the name and power of our great Leader to effect the national redemption. But I must not detain you longer. He has gone out from us. His mission is ended here. Those eloquent lips must remain forever sealed on earth. He simply ceases to be seen of us. We follow his path of translation with mingled tears and joy. The future life, whose place is beyond the skies, was a matter of great concern to him. I recall the hour when he returned to his room from a lecture on the immortality of the soul. He was almost overcome by the discussion which was being carried on in the class-room. He wanted the subject taken out of the realm of probability, and brought to the test of certainty and demonstration. "O, chum!" he exclaimed, "I wish I might die now; I can hardly wait for the demonstration!" He did not wait long. The bending heavens caught up his spirit, and he has gone into the holy city through the beautiful gate which opens over all graves.
"Thus saints, that seem to die in earth's rude strife, only win double life; they have but left our weary ways to live in memory here, in Heaven by love and praise."