Casco Bay as seen near the Kellogg Homestead, Harpswell, Maine.
Through nearly threescore years what blessed work was his! And his reward is not wholly on high, although it will be so in the consummation. But here and now and in the years to come is a great part of it, in living power in the hearts and souls of men and women walking worthily in this world, letting their light also shine to illumine the path for others still. Who can estimate the value, the power, the reach, of a work like this? Faithful friends are earnest now to set up a monument to mark the place of his forth-giving and to keep the memory of him fresh; but the whole world is not too wide to look for the place of his power, and the memory of him belongs to the eternities.
A TRIBUTE
Abiel Holmes Wright
[On Tuesday, March 19, 1901, funeral services for Mr. Kellogg were held at the Harpswell church. At these services Professor Henry L. Chapman officiated, and spoke to the Harpswell people of the work and character of their beloved pastor. A choir of Bowdoin College students, members of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, sang appropriate hymns. On the next day services were held in the Second Parish church of Portland at which Rev. Abiel H. Wright, pastor of the St. Lawrence Street church and an intimate friend of Mr. Kellogg, delivered the following tribute, and Rev. Dr. George Lewis of South Berwick offered prayer. The burial was in the Western Cemetery, Portland, where are buried Mr. Kellogg’s wife and father and mother.]
In one of the pastoral psalms God’s thought and feeling concerning the death of his consecrated servants find this expression, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints.” When the aged saint comes home from the toil and trouble of his earth-time services, there is joy in the heart of the Eternal Father. Angels rejoice when one sinner repenteth and the life of faith is begun on earth, but when the sinner becomes a saint and the long weary trial-way is trodden through to its end, when, as the Lord sees, His servant’s work is done, and he is received on high into the saints’ everlasting rest, then indeed the death of His saint is precious in His sight.
Fifty-seven years ago Elijah Kellogg began his life ministry as a preacher of the Gospel in the humble village of Harpswell Centre, where a few days past it was ended. What minister of Maine has ever been more widely known and loved by its people than was this saintly and revered preacher? As a young man of thirty years but recently from Andover Theological Seminary, he began his ministry among the Harpswell people; as an aged saint of God, nearly eighty-eight years old, known and loved far and wide in our land, he closed that ministry in his death, among the people he had seen grow up from childhood to declining age. He had baptized the children of those who were his first parishioners. He had buried the parents and in many instances the grandparents of those who loved, revered, and supported him during the last years of his laborious ministry.