sideration for others, and generous, large-hearted sympathy, and large-minded views of men and things. Few men enjoyed so rare a reputation for these essential virtues amid the temptations of professional and public life. While some of his eminent compeers were hopelessly ruined by the vices of the capital; while he moved amid the same exciting scenes, at a very critical period of our congressional history, his senatorial robes were always white, and his example was lustrous with undiminished moral and religious light for all. Yet he was a very humble man. He did not appear to "think of himself more highly than he ought to think." He did not take the highest place at the feast, but waited until the Master of the feast came and said to him: "Friend, come up higher."

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 Nathanael, when he came to Jesus, he was "an Israelite indeed in whom there was no guile."

But it was the religion of Jesus Christ which gave to Mr. Frelinghuysen his chief distinction. I doubt much if since he took his public stand as a Christian, he was ever thought of apart from that character. He was the Christian lawyer, the Christian senator, the Christian philanthropist, the Christian gentleman, the Christian always and every where. His honesty and integrity, his eloquence 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. With natural powers which were surpassed by some of his great compeers, and equaled by many, it is safe to say that no man, not even the greatest of them all, exerted the same kind of lofty and permanent influence which he did by the sheer force of his well-known consistent religious character. "As an honest man," (says one of his friends,) "as well as a learned and able advocate, he came to possess such power over juries, that his opinion at the bar was regarded with profounder reverence than that of the judge or the bench; and when, as Attorney-General, it became his duty to pros. ecute a criminal, a conviction was considered absolutely certain if Mr. Frelinghuysen declared his belief that the man was guilty.'

* New-York Observer, from which also we take the following anecdote: "More

The same writer states that 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.

It may serve to bring out the brightness of this shining character, in contrast with political tactics, to mention the following incident. When the tidings of the nomination reached New-York, one of the most celebrated scholars of our country, who narrated the fact to your preacher, said to the leading editor of the same. political party: "How do you like the nomination of Mr. Frelinghuysen?" He replied: "It will never do! It will never do! He is too much mixed up with the Bible Society." "Well, sir," said the scholar referred to, "if it has come to this-that, because a man is a Christian, and president of a Bible Society, he can not be elected to high office-it is time that we should know it."

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. More than thirty years ago, the late Dr. J. W. Alexander, then at Trenton, wrote to his friend and biographer: "Mr. Frelinghuysen is here at this time, full of the subject of temperance. He is a singular instance of a man zealously devoted to every good enterprise without the slightest eccentricity."* "The character which he then bore at forty-three years of age, grew until it ripened for the harvest at seventy-five. Philanthropy has had no more noble advocate, Christianity no more devout pattern of its graces, and of its broad, deep, genuine catholicity. He was a member, an elder, and a presiding officer of than forty years ago, and in the northern part of the State of New York, we heard one man say to another: 'If I knew where there was an honest lawyer, I would go a thousand miles to see him.' Another man replied: "If you go to New-Jersey and ask for Theodore Frelinghuysen, you will find the man.' Such was his reputation at that early period of his shining career."

Another writer gives a similar illustration in the Standard and Presbyterian Exposi tor: A man came into Newark, one day, and asked the innkeeper to direct him to a first-rate lawyer. "Well," said Boniface, "if you have a good cause, go to Frelinghuysen, he is an honest lawyer, and never undertakes any other kind; but if you want a keen, sharp lawyer, that sticks at nothing, go to Lawyer He watched the way the stranger went, and he went straight to Lawyer

*Forty Years Familiar Letters of J. W. Alexander, D.D. Vol. i. p. 147.

some of the Boards of my own Church. We have not another like him to lose. During a lengthened period of his life, before there was a church of our order in Newark, he was a member and elder of the Presbyterian Church in that place, where his first confession of Christ was made. But he belonged not to us, nor to our sister Church. The whole Church of Christ in these United States claims him as the type, embodiment and representative of Christian Union, and of that "unity of the Spirit" which is "the bond of peace" and "of perfectness." No better proof of this can be named than the singular fact that at one time he held the office of President in those three great national and catholic institutions, the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The first of these he retained until his death. It is also stated in the public prints that he was President of the American and Foreign Christian Union, and of the American Temperance Union. Yet no man ever loved more heartily, or held with greater tenacity, the creed and polity of his own mother Church. He was a theologian of ample acquirements, of rigid evangelical views, and of thorough orthodoxy according to the Calvinistic standard of Dordrecht and Westminster. All his ancestral, traditional, and local associations, his constitutional tendencies, his education, and his conscientious convictions, united to make him a living type of "the good old ways of the Reformation." He was neither a bigot nor a latitudinarian. He stood upon the highest ground of unsectarian Christianity, and yet like a good soldier of Jesus Christ he obeyed that apostolic injunction: Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with charity." (1 Cor. 16: 13, 14.)

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His peculiar powers of eloquent speech were often developed on the anniversary occasions of our great national religious institutions, and with wonderful effect. Thus I remember how, a few years ago, when some converted Indians were introduced at one of the sessions of the American Board of Foreign Missions, he welcomed them in an impromptu address which thrilled the vast assembly, and so paralyzed the utterance of others, that even one of the most eminent pulpit orators of our time, who was to follow him, only apologized and exclaiming, "But who can come after the king?" sat down among the tearful multitude. His faith, and his love for Christ and his cause, were measured by the world, the Bible, and the Cross. With him "there was neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female: for all are one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3: 28.)

He was a regular attendant of the union daily prayer-meetings which were held in New-Brunswick during and since the late revival, and took a leading part in the exercises, and an humble seat among the lowly. For many years during his legal practice

while a Senator in Congress, when Chancellor of the University, and afterward, when President of Rutgers College, he was a Sab. bath-school teacher, who loved his work, deemed it one of his highest honors, and found in it a comfort and reward of which be now enjoys the full fruition. He considered it, and often spoke of it, as one of his greatest privileges to be permitted to lead his young classes to the Bible and the Saviour. The Sunday-school has good reason to rejoice in his light, for it burned and shone there with the lustre of his great example and gracious power. He had unusual ability to make things plain to the most humble mind, and this, with his deep sincerity, won his way to the hearts of the young quite as readily as he impressed himself upon juries and popular assemblies.

Another preeminent trait of his Christian character was his faithfulness. He could "reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suf fering and gentleness." He did this with an authority which only goodness can command. The righteous indignation which the sacred writers show against sin, and their fidelity to truth, and to the transgressor, were richly displayed in the habitual conduct of Mr. Frelinghuysen. It was this which kindled his burning eloquence at the bar in behalf of the oppressed, and against the culprit; which flamed like tongues of fire in his senatorial speeches against the wrongs of the Indians, and against the Sabbath mails; and which enabled him to confront his own party, and its great leaders, and the administration, which he opposed whenever the occasion demanded it. It was this faithfulness, too, which made his very presence and character a silent and perpetual protest against all iniquity in high places. It was this, again, with which, like a prophet, he is said to have reproved, and melted, and subdued the profane impatience of a great leader, whom he loved, and who had vainly tried to bring him over to his views on an exciting topic. "I will not stay in the room with you, if you indulge in this wicked profanity. My ears shall not be shocked by it. When you can talk to me like a gentleman or a Christian, I will return, but I will never speak to you till then." And was not the answer characteristic of the great man who replied: "Come back, Frelinghuysen. I am all wrong. Forgive me. Forgive me. I will be guilty no more. Hear me. Hear me. will not swear any more!"* This was not the ebullition of a transient feeling under an insulting remark. It was the outworking of a principle within him, which grew stronger and brighter with his experience. Every body felt it. From the Senate Chamber to the farthest bounds of the Union, the wise and good of the whole land rejoiced in his light. It burned and it shone for all the people. During his career as an educator of youth, in the University and in the College, this influence was like an atmos

*See note at the close of the sermon.

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phere around him and his pupils, and the institutions. When he reproved his students for any wrong, if they felt his momentary indignation, they could not get away from his loving heart. They knew his goodness, and many a youth will carry to his grave the tender memory of his private expostulations, his faithful warnings, his generous pity, and his unfailing love. Few could more readily speak a word in season to the young, for Christ and the soul, than this beloved man of God. One of his students lately told me that the last conversation with him, as he joined him in the street, and they walked a few squares together, was on the subject of his personal salvation. verted young man, but he felt the charm and the irresistible appeal; and all the more when but a few days later those eloquent lips were cold in death. Religion was not with him a matter of form, or of common-place talk, but it was a daily life. It was "a well of water within him springing up unto everlasting life "-"a well of salvation from which he and others drew water with joy." Would you know how his students regarded him? Listen to this testimony of one who speaks the voice of all that were worthy of him:

He was an uncon

"All I can say is, that I love him as a father for the tenderness, the amiability, the simplicity, the constancy and fervor of his heart. I admire him for the comprehensiveness, the exactness and the beauty of his richly furnished mind. I revere him for the humility, the ardor, the consistency and constancy, the completeness of his Christian life." And this description answers precisely to the good President's own portraiture of his high vocation as an instructor and guardian of youth: "How single-minded and steadfast should be the watchfulness!-how faithful the discipline-how stern, if need be, and yet how kind! How true to duty and to the best and highest interests of the soul!"*

There is one other characteristic of this venerated man, which can not be omitted in even the most superficial view of his traits. He was the beau ideal of a Christian patriot. The motto of his life was: "For Christ and my country." I need not stop to tell this audience how he exemplified his love of country. It was a part of the man and of his life. Scarcely one year ago, with his own bands, in the presence of a great multitude of citizens and colle gians, he raised the banner of the stars and stripes above the college edifice, where for years he had expounded the constitutional law of the land, and trained hundreds of young men in the knowledge and love of the Union. And when the bright flag floated in the breeze, he electrified the people with one of those short, ringing, overwhelming bursts of eloquence which only some great occasion could bring from him. The old fire burned from the lowest depths of his loyal heart when he exclaimed: "The Union

* Inaugural Address as President of Rutgers College.