Oh, brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a season thy precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but we fling back against all our brightening skies the thoughtless speech that calls thee dead! God reigns and His purpose lives, and although these brave lips are silent here, the seeds sown in his incarnate eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler men!
But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we should speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within the city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been sawn from the sound prosperity that he builded, and that the light which plays upon its summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine that he brought into the world.
And for the rest—silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral was that no sound broke the stillness save the reading of the Scriptures, and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn beside the sunlight of his useful life. After all, there is nothing grander than such living.
I have seen the light that gleamed from the headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the darkness, heedless of opposition, fearless of danger, and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the eastern hills in glory, driving the hazy darkness like mist before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree and blade of grass glittered in the myriad diamonds of the morning ray, and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light that leaped at midnight athwart the storm-swept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth flashed into mid-day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the grandest thing next to the radiance that flows from the Almighty Throne is the light of a noble and beautiful life, wrapping itself in benediction round the destinies of men, and finding its home in the blessed bosom of the Everlasting God!
THE GLORY OF PEACE
Charles Sumner
The art of war is yet held even among Christians to be an honorable pursuit. It shall be for another age to appreciate the more exalted character of the art of benevolence which, in blessed contrast with the misery, the degradation, the wickedness of war, shall shine resplendent in the true grandeur of peace. Then shall the soul thrill with a nobler heroism than that of battle. Peaceful industry, with untold multitudes of cheerful and beneficent laborers, shall be its gladsome token. Literature, full of sympathy and comfort for the heart of man, shall appear in garments of purer glory than she has yet assumed. Science shall extend the bounds of knowledge and power, adding unimaginable strength to the hands of men, opening innumerable resources in the earth and revealing new secrets and harmonies in the skies.
The increasing beneficence and intelligence of our own day, the broad-spread sympathy with suffering, the widening thoughts of men, the longings of the heart for a higher condition on earth, the unfulfilled promises of Christian progress are the auspicious auguries of this happy future. As early voyagers over untried realms of waste we have already observed the signs of land. The green and fresh red berries have floated by our bark, the odors of the shore fan our faces, nay, we may seem to descry the distant gleam of light, and hear from the more earnest observers, as Columbus heard, after midnight from the masthead of the Pinta, the joyful cry of "Land! Land!" and lo! a new world broke upon his early morning gaze.