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never produces common thoughts in transcendental magnificence. He never attempts to carry Goliath's spear, nor to wear Saul's armor. The smooth stones of the brook are his weapons. He is no comet with its blaze, but a clear, pure, silver star, that is never dim. Neither with the pen nor the voice was he so popular as to be intoxicated by flattery, and never tempted to become singular that he might be notorious.

He was the only man whom I ever knew so well, whom I never heard make a foolish remark. His pen never lay idle. The number of sermons, pamphlets, articles in magazines and papers, which he wrote, would make, if collected, very many volumes. Up to the very last his pen was busy, and never more busy than during the past winter. He seemed to act as if he had a presentiment that he was doing his last work. Among his writings are prominent the following, each of which is a volume of perhaps about 400 pages, namely:

Discourses and Reviews, published in 1834.

Letters from Europe, 1838.

Letters to a Son in the Ministry, 1842.

Memoir of Prof. N. W. Fiske, 1850.
Memoir of Rev. T. H. Gallauder, 1858.
Revival Sketches, 1859.

I have given you but a faint conception of what he wrote. He was always sowing beside all waters, and never withholding his hand when there was a prospect of doing good to any body and on any subject that was worthy.

In summing up the traits of Dr. Humphrey's character, the most prominent were:

1st. That his character and faculties were remarkably balanced and symmetrical.

I mean by this, that his faculties were such, that none were wanting, none unduly developed, none played out of time, none were dwarfed, none weak, and none refusing to act. This made his old age so bright and so beautiful. This prevented any decay in his faculties that was hardly perceptible. It sometimes, indeed, seemed to take longer to get the mill at work than it used to do, but when once a-going, it produced the finest of flour.

The aged man commonly looks back and sees how much better former times were than these, so that what is new in the forms of vice must be worse than the old forms, and what is new in good. ness must be only error under a false name. Dr. Humphrey kept himself abreast of the age, was posted up in every department of humanity, was fresh in all that is moving among men, and never unwilling to adopt what was new, if it was good. There was nothing like fossil about his mind, or taste, or heart. And yet his moral perceptions were so true that you might pour over him

a load of theories and opinions, and he would instantly pick out the true from the shams.

2d. He was distinguished for great practical wisdom.

Wisdom, in its fullest sense, is the highest quality of man. He may have cunning, which Bacon calls "crooked wisdom," and it is to real wisdom what vivacity is to wit, or what gravity is to thought, but it is not wisdom. He may have shrewdness, which is such a power to read and know men, as the scholar has to read books. But wisdom embraces prudence, which merely keeps us from doing wrong, without making us do any thing. It embraces sagacity, which is seeing what might be done. It is the soul in action without making mistakes. A rare thing it is to find a man who has lived more than four-score years, always in action, who has said and done so few unwise things as President Humphrey. It is an original gift. Those who have gone to him for counsel, those who have acted with him on committees or on ecclesiastical councils, those who have wrestled with him in deep discussions in ministerial meetings, those who have sat under him as an instructor or pastor, have all, without dissent, accorded to him the appellation of "a wise man." On all moral questions, his instincts were quick and unerring. Though he made no pretensions to far-reaching views, yet all well knew that to follow his advice was to walk in safety. I never knew an instance where it was disregarded, when the mistake was not most manifest sooner or later.

3d Dr. Humphrey was a man of great integrity of character. In dealing with men, he acted as if he had never met the word fraud, and we should as soon expect to hear that he had committed highway robbery, as that he had defrauded a man of a farthing. There was no shrewdness manifested in money matters, and no shield but the good providence of God was between him and defrauders.

But there is a higher order of justice than that of bargains. And one of the hardest things for poor human nature to do, is to put, I will not say a charitable construction, but even a just one, on the actions of our fellow-men. If a man fails in business, how difficult to feel that he is not to blame, rather than that he is unfortunate! But our friend could see that there might be good motives and good results, in the actions of men, where others could see nothing of the kind. His estimate of an action, a character, or a book, I will not say was unerringly correct, but he held the scales of justice true and firm.

4th. He had great simplicity of character.

When you met his sweet smile on the sidewalk, when you heard him in the prayer-meeting, when he stood in the pulpit, when he presided at Commencement, and when he spoke at our great missionary anniversaries, you always felt that he had a sim

plicity of character that was like a child's, honest, sincere, and not self-seeking. I have heard it said that when he entered College a rough farmer's son, this simplicity was mistaken for some. thing else, till they met him in the recitation and the debating room, when they found that what seemed a noiseless instrument, lacked nothing of power. It never became any thing of the simplicity of King Lear in second childhood, but it was the habit of the soul through life, and a part of his character.

5th. Dr. Humphrey had great magnanimity of character.

Generosity and humanity are qualities of the heart. Magnanimity pertains to the mind. It lifts and holds the soul up above what is mean, sordid, contracted or envious. It is something which commands admiration, whether seen in the lion sparing his prey, in the school-boy who can congratulate his rival on his success, in the general who will take no unmanly advantage of his enemy, and in the public man who is above envying his compeers. In all our intercourse with Dr. Humphrey, we never heard him depreciating a man, a town, a college, or a body of men.

On two occasions, since I knew him, I thought he was treated uncourteously and most unkindly by men. And, when most men would have stood aloof in offended dignity, or mourned in sullen silence, or complained loudly and publicly, and though when I spoke to him in regard to it, tears for a moment stood in his eyes, yet the smile came back at once, and I never heard him make a remark indicating the least resentment, the least hardness, or that he knew there was such a thing as wrong done to him. On the contrary, by special acts of kindness, and those long continued, he showed not only that the meek and lovely spirit of Christ was his, but also that the angel of love had never left his heart even for an hour.

A man that can step down from a lofty position into private life, and pass through all the vicissitudes of a long public life, and feel that his race is run and that he must decrease, and yet never remember aught against his fellow-men, must be a magnanimous character.

6th. Great humanity and benevolence was a characteristic of Dr. Humphrey.

Benevolence embraces the good of any thing than can suffer or receive benefit. Old men in Fairfield to this day will tell you how Mr. Humphrey used to visit the schools of that town, and when he saw little children sitting on benches without any backs to them, and so high that their little feet could not reach the floor, he insisted upon the unheard-of thing of having the benches alter ed, and many a little back was saved its achings. And humanity was taught to the whole town! And all the way through life, he carried this trait. It sought the salvation of a world, the good of

his country, and considered the need of the little child as he walked without shade to school.

He was emphatically "a public-spirited man." There could be no enterprise proposed, whether it was to supply the town with water, with gas, open a new cemetery, rear a Medical College, shade the streets, or any thing else which was for the good of the public, in which he was not ready to engage, heart and hand. And that not in a manner that was meddlesome, and as if uneasy for something to do, but in a manner that led all to feel that it was simple benevolence of character. On almost every thing done for the good of this community, for the last fifteen years, he laid his hand, and left its imprint there. Up to the very last of his days he was alive to every thing that looked to the public good.

His love to the children and to those just beginning life was very strong. And it was affecting to see the aged man of 80, go into our town meeting and plead for a park and for trees, in behalf of the children too young to plead for themselves, and then to see him go out and superintend the setting out of those trees. There are hundreds of such trees now growing, under the shade of which those yet unborn will sit and walk who will never know whose hand planted them.

He was in deep sympathy with every thing human, and I have heard him speak in behalf of the colonization of Africa, upon the wrongs of slavery in this country, in behalf of the temperance cause, of the educating young men for the ministry, in behalf of Colleges here and at the West, in behalf of the Tract, the Home Mission, and the Foreign Missionary cause-and in each case his soul was absorbed in that particular branch of benevolence, as if he had never thought of any other. And as to charity, he was generous and free, almost to a fault. I have been amazed at times, to see how constant was the stream of his charities, and no less at the size of the stream. So universal, so full and so deep his benevolence that I should be very much disappointed to learn that he has left a personal enemy in the world. I do not believe he has. 7th. Humility was a conspicuous trait in the character of our friend.

Humility does not require us to lay aside our self-respect, nor to be continually depreciating ourselves. It seldom talks about itself, and never, except in the most confiding friendship. Dr. Humphrey never seemed to be conscious of humility; he never especially evinced it in words, or even in prayer; yet we all felt that it pervaded his whole character. We never heard him complain of neglect, hard usage, or of any disappointment. Even in age, when the old war-horse could not snuff the battle and laugh at the rattling of the spear, as he once could, he submitted as quietly and as meekly as the little child who had never left the

shadows of his father's house. It was not the humility produced by comparing himself with other men, but humility before God, learned by leaning against the cross, and looking into the face of Jesus. And when we beheld his face shining as did the face of Moses, we knew it was because he had dwelt long in the Mount with God.

8th. He was a man of devoted, earnest piety.

This pervading, permeating characteristic is something that can not be described. It is to the spirit what light is to the world. It cheers and beautifies every thing. It subdues nature, smoothes asperities, refines the taste, ennobles the feelings, purifies and strengthens the intellect, enlarges the views, warms and expands the sympathies, and clothes the whole man with garments that are divine. On his conversion, Dr. Humphrey embraced the great leading doctrines of the Bible as expounded by Calvin, and which have make so many great and strong men. And I have heard old. men say that when installed over the College church at Amherst, he gave to the Council his system of theology, and for clearness, for conciseness, comprehensiveness and beauty, they had never heard it equaled. He was a Calvinist in the true sense of the term, and a beautiful specimen of it in preaching and in character. In his last sickness, he told me that he had no misgivings whatever as to the great truths of the Gospel which he had taught. "My only," added he, with child-like simplicity, "my only fears are, that I have not enforced them as I ought and might have done !"

His last sickness was an exhibition of one of the mysteries of our nature, when disease preys upon the nerves with a power which no medical skill can control, and which seems to make the whole body a collection of diseased cords-not one of which can be quieted, till the body and intellect are overpowered—a state most painful to bear, and hardly less so to witness. For the most part, the reason was clouded; but even then, in the dark prisonhouse, his spirit was feeling after the pillars of truth, and searching for her accustomed light. Samson, in the prison-house, dark and dreary, is noble, even there. At one time, in the mazes of a beclouded intellect, tempted, as he thought, to apostatize, he told his imaginary tempter: "No, I can not become a Jew!" And as the trial was crowding harder, and he felt that he was persecuted to turn Mohammedan, he said, with his own emphatic voice and manner, "No amount of suffering, mental or physical, will make me turn Mohammedan! and then added-and in the circumstances of the case it was sublime-" I know in whom I have be

lieved! I know that my Redeemer liveth! I stand upon the Rock of Ages!"

At another time, when a friend intimated to him that his end was near, he seemed to start up out of the lethargy-the cloud at

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