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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES.

MISCELLANEOUS.

A PHILANTHROPIST.

A BURNING AND SHINING LIGHT.

W. J. R. TAYLOR, D.D.

COMMEMORATIVE OF THE HON. THEODORE FRELINGHUYSEN, LL.D., IN THIRD REFORMED CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA.

“He was a burning and a shining light: and yc were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.-JOHN V : 35.

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OW beautiful this designation of the Forerunner is, we may learn by a brief analysis.

I. He was a "light." But of what kind? Literally the word in the original means a portable light, as a candle, lamp, or torch, which must be made, prepared, and kindled into a flame. He was not the uncreated Light, "the Sun of righteousness." "He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which lighteth every man that

cometh into this world."

The greatest of all the

prophets was but a lamp, a torch, compared with Christ, the full-orbed and Eternal Sun.

II. But he was a burning light." He was on fire, burning, blazing with self-consuming ardor in the service of God. He had "oil in his vessel with his lamp," and it never went cut for lack of fucl. The Baptist, like our Saviour, was ever full of his work. His zeal consumed him. His devotion burned with the most intense fire of love. It glowed like a furnace at a white heat. It sent out its own radiating and reflecting fire, until the wilderness was kindled by its flames, and the nation was aglow with his awful power. But

III. “He was a burning and a shining light." Some fires burn but do not blaze, nor is it every flame that gives true light. There must be something to burn, some solid chemical matter in every flame that makes an illumination. So there are souls which consume away but do not shine. But John the Baptist burned and shone, because his light was light from heaven. It was not stolen like the fabled Promethean fire, but it was kindled at the uncreated and eternal source; and then it was set where all could see it and rejoice in it, while it flamed heavenward from earth.

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Yet that burning and shining light" went out; it burned fast; it shone but a little while, and then he who was the lamp that lighted our Saviour's feet on carth, was made one of the brightest of the stars that burn and shine forever and ever before the throne of God.

When God raises up eminent Christians, endows them with gifts and graces, and honors them and their work for Jesus' sake; the Church is bound by her loyalty to her King, and by her debt to redeeming love, to "rejoice in that light and to walk in it" "for the season dur

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ing which it lasts. Every such believer in Christ is a miracle and monument of grace. The blood of Christ has been sprinkled on him, the love of Christ constrains him, the witness of the Holy Spirit is within him, and his seal upon him. His body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. He burns and shines with love divine. He does the work of Christ. He obeys the word and will of Christ. "Ye are the light of the world, &c." And when our Lord takes these "burning and shining lights" away from the Church on earth, they go not out in endless night, but he transfers them to the temple that is not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." He takes them from a lower to a higher place where they burn and shine forever with brighter lustre and with purer flame.

In this spirit let us now turn to see the illustration of these truths in the character and death and influences of that eminent servant of the Lord for whom we lament, and yet praise God to-day.

The object of this discourse is not to present a biographical sketch nor to attempt a full-length portrait of our "American Wilberforce," but simply to exhibit some of those characteristics which have made him for more than a generation "a burning and a shining light" in the Church and in the nation. Against the dark background of our unhappy times his character stands in bright and bold relief, admired by millions, and beloved by all who know the man and his native and gracious worth.

A Christian is not the one to undervalue a descent from godly forefathers. The ancestors of Theodore. Frelinghuysen, both in this country and in Holland, were eminent for their love of liberty, their independence of spirit, and their intelligent attachment to the truth of God. In character, religion, and statesmanship,

his lineage was equally honorable and blessed of God, who has made him the most illustrious of his name.

Let me speak to you of his character. By the concurrent testimony of the whole nation as expressed in private and public, in the pulpit, and at the forum, and through the press, "he was a burning and a shining light," and "we rejoiced for a season in his light."

It would be hard to say what particular gifts and traits made that light so b ight. He was a man of eminent intellectual gifts, and of scholarly tastes; an orator of no mean fame and of classic eloquence; a lawyer who adorned the able bar of his native State; a Senator who stood high in the front ranks when the Senate of the United States contained its greatest lights. But it was the final balance of his powers, the beautiful adjustment of intellectual and moral qualities with refinement of culture, admirable judgment, and unique individuality of character, speech and action, which constituted the general excellence of the man. In this happy combination of characteristics without the striking preponderance of any one intellectual gift, he was not unlike our matchless Washington.

Perhaps the best designation of his character would be its purity. No miser's covetousness wrote its hateful legends on his calm brow. Nobody looked in his shadow for "treason, stratagems, and spoils;" for lurking cunning, nor for that peculiar malice with which hardened age sometimes steels its withered nerves. He was like the crystal, solid but translucent. You could see through him, and love him, because he unconsciously sought and bore the test of sunlight. Like Nathaniel, when he came to Jesus, he was an Israelite indeed in whom there was no guile."

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But it was the religion of Jesus Christ which gave to Mr. Frelinghuysen his chief distinction. He was the

Christian lawyer, the Christian senator, the Christian philanthropist, the Christian gentleman, the Christian always and everywhere. His honesty and integrity, his cloquence and his power were all, like himself, "baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." "The blood of sprinkling" was on the posts of his doors, on his family, his calling, on every service that he rendered to the country or to the cause of Christ.

I know no finer instance of the vast increase of power which religion gives to a man of intellect and education.

When his name was proposed in the caucus of the National Convention, for Vice-President, on the same ticket with Henry Clay, a distinguished Southern lawyer opposed it in these words: "I know him well; I admire and love him : if I were searching the world over for a man to be my pastor, my spiritual guide, I would seek Theodore Frelinghuysen of all men living; but to drag him through the mire of party politics at the tail of a presidential ticket, I will never consent to it—never, never!" Still he was nominated, and failed of an election, that would have placed in the second office of the nation one of the purest of statesmen.

But God had better things in store for his honored servant. Both before and after his retiracy from political life, he was the most eminent living American representative of the great moral, philanthropic and religious institutions of the age. Nothing that concerned the welfare of humanity and the kingdom of Christ, was foreign to him. Philanthropy has had no more noble advocate, Christianity no more devout pattern of its broad, graces and of its deep, genuine catholicity. The whole Church of Christ in these United States claims him as the type, embodiment and representative of Christian Union

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