ness of the sun transcends the glimmer of the taper that sheds its pallid lustre over the gloom of night. The harvest of death is the seed-time of the coming age. The bodies which he carries to the tomb, are sown in corruption, in dishonour, and in weakness, only that they may be raised again in incorruption, in glory, and in power. The time is coming when death himself shall die; when the grave shall be abolished; when this mortal shall put on immortality; and the song of triumph shall be heard as when the captive is delivered from his bondage, and the fetters are broken from the limbs of the slave.

How cheering, supporting, and elevating, are such views as these to the believer in the prospect of the pains of death, and the corruption of the tomb! These pains will soon be over, and then succeeds the state where pain, and shame, and sin, are all unknown. This corruption is but the preliminary to a state of perfect glory,-the burying and decaying of the seed that is ere long to unfold its leaves, and spread out its branches, and fill the air with its fragrance, and yield to the Master of the field the treasures of its fruit. When such thoughts and prospects as these are realized, "the bitterness of death is past." The mysterious gloom that overshadows the tomb clears away. The dark and repulsive passage is seen to end in the splendour of the heavenly temple. The soul that was bound by the fear of death now tastes that liberty which the conqueror of death inspires. And as the outward tabernacle begins to show symptoms of decay, the happy spirit exults to anticipate "a building with God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

The grave is thus robbed of its terrors. Around it gather associations not of defeat but of victory; not of humiliation but of honour. Through its portals the weary pilgrim passes to his home. In its quiet chambers, the conqueror reposes after the struggles of the field. Paganism, conscious only of the presence of decay, kindled for the dead, the funereal pyre; but Christianity, expectant of the resurrection, lays their bodies reverently in the dust, and inscribes upon their sepulchre, "In Christ, he sleeps in peace." *

These reflections will not, I trust, be found unsuited to the circumstances under which we meet this day. The hand of death has been

"In Christo. Dormit in pace," the usual inscription on the tombs of the early Christians. See Maitland's Church in the Catacombs.

uplifted amongst us, and has struck down one of the most distinguished, beloved, and useful of our ministers. The sickle of the fell reaper has been put into this part of the field, and the most valued of its sheaves has been taken away. By a sudden and unlooked for visitation, the venerated individual who has so long sustained the pastoral office in this church, has been removed from the land of the living. Already

have his remains been for some time in the tomb. We have met this day to offer our homage to his memory, and to improve his loss. I should strangely misrepresent the feelings of others, and greatly belie my own, did I in the most distant manner insinuate that such a dispensation is not mournful and distressing. It is so; we feel it to be so. We avow our grief. We are not ashamed of our tears. We are here this day as mourners, and the sorrow that fills our bosoms is deep, poignant, and oppressive. But we would not that any should mistake the reason of our sorrow. We would not be thought to entertain one anxiety, to express one fear on behalf of him who is gone. Our grief is in this case purely selfish. We sorrow exclusively for ourselves and our children. When we think of him, we feel that it rather behoves us to rejoice and triumph. He has gone to the Father. He has rested from his labours. From henceforth and for ever he is blessed. Ere the sickle was put in, the harvest had fully come. The shock had stood its full time on the field. It was carried home in its season. The richly ripened grain has been safely lodged in the Master's garner, according to the Master's will.

He lives

True it is, that our beloved friend had not reached that period of life when, according to ordinary modes of judging, he might be said to be full of years. He was not permitted to remain here until growing infirmities and manifest decay gave intimation of approaching dissolution. He has been taken away while as yet his strength was firm, and his powers of both body and mind were apparently unbroken. But let us not on that account think that he has died before his time. the most who, during his existence here below, accomplishes in the largest manner the grand purposes of life. The uses to which health, talent, influence, and property, are consecrated, and not the mere lapse of time during which those may have been possessed by any individual, determine how much of life he really has enjoyed. Viewed in this light — measured by his attainments, his labours, and his successes—the life of our departed friend has been a long one. His sun has not "gone

down whilst it was yet day," but has described its full hemisphere of light and beneficence. Ere he was taken from us, he had "fulfilled his course." He had done a large and a full day's work before he was

summoned to his repose. He came to his " grave in a full age, like

as a shock of corn cometh in in his season."

It is usual on occasions such as the present to offer to the memory of departed worth the tribute of a respectful eulogy. The custom is seemly and advantageous. "The memory of the just is blessed;" and when nothing remains to us of them but their memory, it is alike pleasant and salutary to recapitulate their excellencies and dwell upon their worth.

Most unfeignedly do I wish that this duty had fallen, on the present trying occasion, into other hands than mine; for I feel painfully that I cannot speak of your departed pastor either so as to satisfy the just expectations of those who knew him, or so as to convey an adequate conception of his worth to those who knew him not. But I have been left without liberty of choice in the matter. Ere he departed, your venerated pastor named me as the individual on whom this duty was to be laid; and with this the dying request of one whom living I revered and loved, I felt that I could not, even for a moment, hesitate to comply. Under these circumstances, I cast myself on your indulgence and solicit your favourable attention, whilst I attempt to sketch an outline of the personal and official character of him who has so long and so honourably had the oversight of you in the Lord.

I but re-echo the universal sentiment, when I say that your late beloved and venerated pastor was no ordinary man. It was impossible, even for a stranger, to listen to him, though but for a few minutes, without perceiving that he was a man singularly gifted with the faculty of commanding the attention and swaying the minds of his fellow-men. There was a freshness and originality in the whole cast of his mind, a power, a massiveness, and a breadth in all his forms of thought and expression, an earnestness, sincerity, and purpose-like decision in every thing he said, and a manly freedom of utterance, betokening his mind's perfect mastery of his subject, in all he advanced, which rendered it manifest to every one that his belonged to that higher order of minds whose vocation it is to teach and guide. There was nothing small, or narrow, or superficial, about his mental developement. He was not of the number of those who please by their ingenuity, dazzle by their brilliancy, or attract by their gracefulness. Still less did he belong to

the ranks of those who seek fame at the sacrifice of sobriety and good sense; preferring conceit to truth, and mistaking oddity or extravagance for originality. It could not even be said of him that he owed much either to the splendour of his genius, or the delicacy of his taste. His most prominent mental characteristics were strength, energy, and massiveness, of which his robust and vigorous frame, his firm step, and the hale and manly tones of his voice, were the fitting counterparts and the significant emblems. In all his mental efforts these features were strikingly displayed. In the studies he selected, in the mode in which he pursued them, in the uses he made of what he had acquired, no less than in conveying to others the conceptions of his own mind, the same healthy vigour, and breadth and energy, were conspicuous. Though an eager and extensive reader, who despised no information which books can convey, and who did not hesitate even at times to recreate himself with the lighter literature of the age, it was on the higher and severer studies of theological science and biblical interpretation that be delighted chiefly to exercise his powers; and in these it was not the niceties of a fastidious criticism, not the curiosities of an ingenious exegesis, not the barren distinctions and adroit systematisings of an over-acute logic, that engaged his interest; but the great, broad, fundamental, and formative truths of theology,-the substance, and marrow, and living spirit of the Word of God. There was nothing in him akin to the idle luxury of those who read merely for the sake of reading, or to the narrow cleverness of those who find their highest intellectual pleasure in minute distinctions or peddling ingenuities. He liked to grapple with solid and substantial truth in the mass, to take it in with a firm and masterful grasp, and to give it forth to others in that large and comprehensive form in which he himself had received it. Whether as student or as teacher, the masculine breadth and force of his mind were pre-eminently conspicuous; and hence in no small measure the success which crowned his studies, and the influence he acquired as a teacher over the minds of others. It is ever by the union of largeness and energy that the true empire of mind over mind is secured and perpetuated.

On passing from this general survey of Dr. Russell's intellectual character, to a closer analysis of his mind, it will be apparent, that the vigour and capacity of which we have spoken stood closely associated with the possession of a combination of some of the more commanding faculties in a high degree of development. His was not one

of those minds in which some one power so supremely predominates, that it may be regarded as constituting the main source of the possessor's mental energy; his strength lay rather in the union of several faculties, each of which existed in him in no ordinary degree. He was endowed with vast powers of memory ;* whatever he read he remembered easily and correctly; and so tenacious was his recollection, that he could recall, whenever occasion required, lengthened and intricate trains of thought, which he had prosecuted in his own mind, without the aid of a single note or memorandum. Along with this he possessed a sound and well-regulated judgment, by which he was enabled to form conclusions for himself upon the subjects that came before him, free alike from the fetters of prejudice on the one hand, and the extravagancies of caprice upon the other. His reasoning powers were of a high order; he thought continuously, and argued conclusively, moving to his conclusion by a steady and well defined line of ratiocination; though from the ample range of his mind he often bore along with him a larger amount of collateral and incidental material than was, perhaps, altogether favourable to the clear perception by others of the force and point of his argument.-His imagination, though not of that kind which soars into the empyrean of thought, nor of that which dazzles by the novelty and grandeur of its creations, was such as led him to delight in the beauty and grace of appropriate imagery, and lent vivacity and pathos to the conceptions which the robuster faculties of his own mind had bodied forth.-His reflective powers were great; he delighted to brood over themes of interest; he meditated much on the ideas of things; and ever and anon would give utterance in his discourse to weighty and pregnant apophthegms, which carried with them their own evidence to the reason of his auditors. To all this he added, in a degree not often exhibited, the power of concentrating his mental energies upon the subject that was before

*It is related of him that when a child of ten years of age, he gained a prize at school for repeating the whole of the Shorter Catechism, with the Scripture Proofs, without missing a word.

† A remarkable instance of this was furnished on the occasion of his delivering the charge to his son at his ordination; though the discourse was a long one, and full of the minutest counsels and exhortations, not one word of it had been committed to writing; and yet so completely did his memory retain it, that some weeks after he wrote it out verbatim as delivered. It appeared in the Christian Teacher for 1839, p. 458.