The Doric Pillar of Michigan.
A MEMORIAL ADDRESS,
Delivered in the Fort Street Presbyterian Church, Detroit, Mich., Thursday Morning, Nov. 27, 1879,
BY
The Rev. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D.
"There were giants in the earth in those days," is the simple record of the age before the flood.
There has been no age without its giants; not, perhaps, in the narrow sense of great physical stature, but in the broader sense of mental might, capacity to command and control. Such men are but few, in the most favored times, and it takes but few to give shape to human history and destiny. Their words shake the world; their deeds move and mold humanity; and, as Carlyle has suggested, history is but their lengthened shadows, the indefinite prolonging of their influence even after they are dead.
One of these giants has recently fallen, at the commanding signal of One who is far greater than any of the sons of men, and at whose touch kings drop their sceptre, and, like the meanest of their slaves, crumble to dust.
This giant fell among us. We had seen him as he grew to his great stature and rose to his throne of power. He moved in our streets; he spoke in our halls; in our city of the living was his earthly home, and in our city of the dead is his place of rest. He went from us to the nation's capital, to represent our State in the Senate of the republic; he belonged to Michigan, and Michigan gave him to the Union; but he never forgot the home of his manhood. Here his dearest interests clustered, and his deepest affections gathered; and here his most loving memorial will be reared. As he belonged peculiarly to this congregation, surely it is our privilege to weave the first wreath to garland his memory.
The annual Day of Thanksgiving is peculiarly a national day, since it is the only one in the year when the whole nation is called upon by its chief magistrate to give thanks as a united people. By common consent, it is admitted proper that, on that day, special mention be made of matters that affect our civil and political well-being. There is therefore an eminent fitness in a formal commemoration upon this day of the life and labors of our departed Senator and statesman.