"At eleven years of age he [Carleton] entered the church. Think of it! Sixty-three years devoted to the service of his Lord and Master! He seems to me to be an illustration of a man who, when he is equal to it, finds a hard physical environment united with a wholesome moral and spiritual environment of supreme advantage. To a weak nature it would very likely mean only failure, but to a man of the heroic mould of Mr. Coffin it meant opportunity, and it only nerved him to more strenuous effort; and it was everything to him that the atmosphere in the home, the community, and the church was what it was,—so warm, so Christian, so spiritual, so sympathetic, and so suited to furnish just the right conditions for the moulding of his very responsive and susceptible nature.
"And then he possessed what I think might very well be called the spirit of aggressiveness, or, possibly better, the spirit of sanctified self-assertion. He never thought of self-assertion for his own sake, or for the sake of honor or promotion, but he had in him a kind of push and an earnestness of purpose—you might almost say audacity—that somehow stirred him and prompted him always to be in the place of greatest advantage at a given time for the service of others. He seemed always to be just at the point of supreme advantage in a crisis, just where he could give the world, at the right time, and in the best way, the fullest report of a battle, or a conference, or any other matters of supreme moment. This was characteristic of him. It appeared all through his New Hampshire life, and was indeed in part a native endowment."
After an address by the author of this volume on "Charles Carleton Coffin as a Historian," Dr. W. E. Barton, in felicitous diction, reviewed the earthly life of him with whose career many memories were then busy.
"Grief is no unusual thing. There is no heart here that has not known it. There is scarce a home where death has not entered. We weep the more sincerely with those that weep, because the intervals are not long between our own sorrows. The whole Commonwealth mourns to-day our chief magistrate. God comfort his family! God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts! God bless him in whose elevation to the Governor's chair Providence has anticipated the will of the people.
"A very tender sorrow brings us here to-day, and we turn for comfort to the Word of God.
"Text: With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.—Ps. 91: 16.
"It is not because of his unusual age that this text seems to me appropriate for the funeral of our friend. His years were but little more than threescore and ten, and his step was light, and his heart was young, and we hardly thought of him as an old man. Nor is it because his work seemed to us completed, that we think of the measure of his days as satisfied. His facile pen dropped upon a new page; and before him, as he ceased to labor, were tasks midway, and others just begun. It is because our first feeling is so unsatisfied, it is because there was so much more which he wished, and we wished him to do, and that we are constrained to measure the length of his life, and to find, if we may find, in spite of this sudden break in our hopes and his plans, a completion that can satisfy. Measured by its experiences and accomplishments, it may seem to us that this life, so abruptly terminated, was one whose length and symmetry well deserve to be considered a fulfilment of the promise of the text."
Following the prayer, Dr. Barton said:
"It was the purpose of our organist, Mr. Dunham, a true and honored friend of Mr. Coffin, to play, as the postlude to this service, the stateliest of funeral marches, but I dissuaded him. This is a Christian funeral. Our music is not a dirge, but a jubilate. The hope of our friend in life is ours for him in death. Instead of even the noblest funeral march expressing our own grief, there will be played the most triumphant of anthems, expressing his own victory over death,—Handel's matchless 'Hallelujah Chorus.'"
The organ then played the "Hallelujah Chorus," and the benediction was pronounced by Dr. Barton.