DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF CONVERS FRANCIS, D. D. DELIVERED BEFORE THE First Congregational Society, Watertown, APRIL 19, 1863. BY REV. JOHN WEISS. DIVINITY ECHOOL LIBRARY. HARVARD UNIVERSITY Cambridge: PRIVATELY PRINTED. 1863. W DISCOURSE. E always take pleasure in surmises concerning the real or possible advantage which death secures to a departed spirit,—the filing of the fetters, the conscious harvesting of a whole life's experience by rekindled youth, the escape of powers from a falling tenement into a great open country where summer broods and quickens, the happy and playful use of long-exercised and chastened gifts. We think of likeness welded to its like in the heat of that moment which dissolves the earth's restrictions; an old affection is reclaimed, or an old discord melts into some predestined harmony. Wherever the body has encroached, or life has cramped like a vice, we imagine the spirit emancipated. For however much a man may triumph in the act of living, and of using all his powers in a genial and noble way, as if he had subsidized everything to |