Shut him from heaven with a dome more vast,"
and, feeling more truly each year the serious business of a denizen of earth, he has doubled his diligence to quit himself like a man.
There has been a deep vein of humor running through his whole life, and the genuine "mother wit" often found in New Englanders has shown itself in him to a marked degree. His answers to difficult questions always come at once, and have a keenness which goes to the marrow of the subject. Those who have listened to his conversation and heard his illustrative anecdotes need no example to call to their mind his native humor, for it has continually shown itself. The uniformity of his disposition should be spoken of. Calm and equable under trying circumstances, he was a strong support to his beloved wife when in feeble health she seemed almost weighed down, and he was especially fitted by this quality for the perplexing difficulties which necessarily beset a laborer in foreign lands.
His ripe years have been passed at the foot of China Lake near his boyhood's home, and he has sat in the meeting as a father in the midst of his family. Now and then called forth for short service, he has loved to hasten back and to be at home.
At the time I write he is still permitted to dwell among us, and we are fortunate in having before our eyes one who has the weight of many years of experience and wisdom.
When riding with him around China Lake one lovely summer day some of us younger members of the party pointed out a church-spire in the distance, and asked him if it was not a beautiful picture—the spire rising from the abundant green of the surrounding trees and pointing to the cloudless blue sky. Slowly he said, "Yes, but it would be better if we knew that all who sit there owned what is above the spire;" and we felt, as we looked at his genial face lighted up as he gazed aloft, that "his citizenship was in heaven" and that "for him to die" would be "gain." There is a domain on earth which only the true servant enters, and there is a realm of which we do not speak definitely that opens its gates to admit those who hear the "Well done!" of the great Master. Blessed indeed is he whose life has been a preparation for the city where no sun is needed, but where the glory of God is the light, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb.
THE END.