To sterling manhood and vice-regal place;
How on that height he bore a manly front,
Lending his pen to freedom's sacred cause-
Counselling wisely for the nation's weal,
And smiling down the ills that menaced her;
Then how at eventide his light was quenched
By base assassination, and his star

Went down 'mid clouds of pain and weariness,
While in its fading rays, ere yet 'twas gone,
Sad-visaged friends, drawn by the bonds of love,
And generous foes who knew and prized his worth,
Paid, side by side, the tribute of their tears.
His faithful fight is o'er; his work is done;
He lived sublimely, and his footsteps mark
A noble course upon the sands of time.
"He was a man, take him for all in all,"
But only man, and therefore had his faults,-
Not weaknesses that rise from recreant heart,
But such as mark and mar the best of lives;
He hated falsehood with a burning scorn,
But may have erred, mistaking true for false;
His nature was a rushing mountain stream,
His faults but eddies which its swiftness bred.
Yes, carve his name on marble monument---
"Twill mark his resting place to reverent eyes
Perchance of generations, until Time,
The tireless sculptor, with relentless hand
Has written an inscription over it

In weird, grim characters of mildewed moss,-
A grander line upon life's fitful dream.
Yet is his name deep graven in our hearts,
A more abiding record, that will pass
From sire to son as proudly-guarded pearl,
So long as Canada shall have true men,
Who love the memory of the great and good.
And may that ever cease? Shall ages come
When man's frail memory is clouded o'er,
And history's page is shrivelled into dust?
Comes there a day when all the lives of earth,
The thoughts and actions, yea, and earth itself
Shall vanish in eternal nothingness?

So be it yet our Statesman's name shall live!
There's an eternal tablet in the skies

Where names are written that shall never fade;
Perish, then, record on ephemeral stone,
Fade, trivial ink on human history's page,-
For with the blood of God's anointed Son,
'Mid all the names of humble, faithful ones,
His name is written in the BOOK OF LIFE.

FUNERAL SERMON.

PREACHED IN ST. JAMES' PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH-WHERE MR. BROWN
USUALLY WORSHIPPED ON THE SABBATH AFTER THE FUNERAL,
BY THE REV. DR. JOHN KING.

TEXT: John xiii. 7: "Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."

In these words of the Saviour, first spoken long ago, and often since recalled by dark and sorrowful experiences in human life-recalled very forcibly by the event which is present to all our minds this morning-we may find a theme of meditation not unsuitable to the occasion on which we are met. They recognize the inscrutable mystery which surrounds in the meantime many of the dealings of God with His people: they convey the assurance that one day this mystery shall be dispelled, and the meaning of the divine procedure towards them made plain and they carry, at least by implication, the promise of their entire satisfaction with this procedure, when its character and aim are fully understood. First, the words before us bear testimony to the mystery with which many of the dealings of God with His people are meanwhile invested. They assert their present ignorance of the aim and the significance of much which befals them. On the occasion on which the words were spoken, the Saviour was about to leave in death the disciples whom He had attached to Himself by very strong and tender ties. With the distinct consciousness of His divine dignity, "knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God," and actuated by an affection for His own which knew no diminution as the appointed end drew near, "He began," previous to partaking of His last meal with them, "to wash the disciples' feet." To Peter this seemed an inversion of all that was proper, almost an indignity to which the Lord was subjecting Himself, and with characteristic warmth of feeling and forwardness of speech he remonstrated against the act being done in his case. "Lord, dost Thou wash my feet? Wouldst Thou, my adored Master and Lord, perform for me, Thy unworthy disciple, a service which only the humblest of men thinks of rendering to his fellows? "Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now." This act of mine, to which thou offerest opposition, has a meaning which thou dost not discern, which thou caust not now discern. It has a depth of condescension in it even greater than thou dost suppose. It possesses a moral instructiveness which it were too much to expect thee to perceive without my help. It has, moreover, a symbolical meaning, a meaning in relation to sin, and man's cleansing from its defilement, which only sufferings to be endured by Me, and illumination to be bestowed on thee as the fruit of these sufferings, can be expected to make plain. What I do thou knowest not now.

The words spoken under these circumstances to the Apostle Peter have their application continually in human life. They find their application in events even which seem quite ordinary, which excite in us no surprise or wondering inquiry at the time of their occurrence, but which are afterwards seen to have wholly unexpected issues bound up with them. For let it be observed what the most proper force of the Saviour's words really is. It is not our ignorance of the motive of His action so much as of its significance that is aflirmed in them. It is not why He does this, but what it is that He does, that the disciple is declared not now to know. And it is exactly here that our human ignorance is most affecting. It is not simply that we cannot descry the future or ascertain the purpose of God in reference to events which have actually befallen us in life; it is that we cannot give the exact significance to the most ordinary of these events. An

acquaintance is made, a friendship is formed, a sphere of life is opened up to us in the providence of God, how often with results for good or for evil not only undiscerned but undreamt of at the time. The issue has shown that the act had a wholly unsuspected meaning. Much, indeed, of the pathos and the poetry of human life springs from this very circumstance, the unknown possibilites that lie bound up, as in a closed bud, in some providential change, the incapacity to discover in what colour it will open out and into what fruit it will ripen.

While the words of the text have their application to many events in life which seem at the time of their occurrence quite ordinary and unimportant, they are brought home to us with peculiar force by other events which at once strike us all as strange and exceptional: as when a career of eminent public service is suddenly terminated-like that, for example, of Sir Robert Peel, by what appeared a chance occurrence; or as when a young man is cut down just as he is entering on a course of usefulness, for which long years of careful preparation had been fitting him; or again, as when one on whose active brain and busy hands infirm age or helpless childhood is wholly dependent is stricken down by disease-when the strong support is removed, and the weak, tender, leaning wife or child is left alone, like a vine deprived of the stay to which it clung, to creep henceforth upon the ground; most of all, when one who seemed to be the greatest earthly help to piety in another, husband, son, or friend; one whose influence seemed necessary not for that other's happiness, but for his faith and his goodness, is taken away in death; and the as yet only half-decided candidate for heaven is left to carry on the unequal struggle with the flesh, the world, and the devil without the one human presence which gave it visible support and promise of success. Then, indeed, in circumstances like these, the words of the text are forcibly recalled. He whose agency is as real and unmistakable in the world of human life as it was eighteen centuries ago in that guest-chamber, seems to say to us again, "What I do thou knowest not now.

The cloud of mystery, however, which in the meantime rests on so much of the divine procedure assumes the darkest form of all in connection with the power allowed to evil and the results which it is suffered to bring about. When we see sin permitted to assail weak virtue and to triumph in its fall; when we see men without piety and without principle raised to positions of authority and influence; when we see bad men permitted to become the oppressors of the weak and the wronged, or when we see evil allowed in the very wantonness of its folly to bring a life of great usefulness to a sudden close, and cover with desolation a once happy home, our inability to understand the nature and meaning of the dealings of God is most deeply felt. Then He may be said to throne Himself in thick darkness, and while defying our comprehension, to challenge simply our submission and our trust. There is, no doubt, an easy, off-hand solution of the difficulty which such cases raise offered to us, namely, the denial of any agency whatever of God in them, the tracing of all such occurrences to the operation of merely natural causes; this solution is one which agrees well with the view which it is becoming so common, under the influence of the science of the age, to take of the universe; but it is not one which the Holy Scriptures will allow, or which a mind at once wise and pious can accept. We cannot shut Him out from any phase of human experience without whom "a sparrow does not fall to the ground." If we find His will, as we are taught to do, in the crucifixion of the Saviour (Acts ii. 23), we can scarcely refuse to recognize it in the manifold and terrible, but surely less appalling, acts of violence and wrong which are happening in our own day and around ourselves.

And yet the mystery attending the power allowed to evil is very deep, and it has been very closely brought home to us in these sorrowful days.

A sudden arrest put by a mad act of violence on a course of unusual and beneficent activity; a public man cut down by such means in the midst of plans unmatured and enterprises unaccomplished; a life tenderly and widely loved, quenched, as we may say, in blood; a family stricken with sorrow. How should this have been permitted under the government of a righteous God? How is it consistent with justice and with mercy in Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will? What is its meaning, what ends are to be accomplished by it, what of grace is in it for the living or for the departed? Who shall tell? Here God acts, as so often in human life, as a God who hides Himself; One whose way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters, and His footsteps not known. Here He makes demands simply on our submission and our faith; disciplining us to humility and to trust, as He says out of the darkness in which He shrouds His dealings, "What I do thou knowest not now," and mercifully adds, "but thou shalt know hereafter."

This leads me to speak, second, of the assurance of light as to the divine procedure which shall one day be given us. We are permitted to believe on the authority of Christ that the mystery in which the providential dealings of God towards us are in the meantime involved shall not be perpetual, that the cloud which covers now so much which we would wish to know shall one day rise, and the purpose and meaning of events which try our faith and perplex our hearts be made plain. In Peter's case the explanation came almost as soon as the strange aud perplexing action of the Lord was over. It was begun by the statement almost immediately thereafter made, "Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord; and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I leave you an example that ye should do as I have done unto you." The explanation was begun by this statement, and it was completed by the sacrifice offered on the cross, and by means of the closer fellowship into which thenceforth the Lord took His disciple through the Spirit. The meaning, literal and symbolical, of the Saviour's act became thereafter plain. It is thus no remote hereafter" which is designated in the text, so far as the apostle's case is concerned, and hence some have proposed to translate the words, Thou shalt soon, presently, know;" or to read them, as they would be literally read, "Thou shalt know after these things." In our case we must generally be content to wait longer for the light which is to clear away our perplexities in regard to the divine procedure. Sometimes, indeed, it is given us to see even in the present life the purport and the grace which belonged to some at first sight perplexing providence. We have all of us come to bless God for events which as they drew near awakened our apprehension and our sorrow, but which have developed into unsuspected issues of God, and in their light have learned the truth as well as beauty of the poet's words:

"We see but darkly through the mists and vapours

Amid these earthly damps;

What seem to us but sad funereal tapers

May be heaven's distant lamps."

More frequently, however, we must be content to wait for the light which is to resolve our doubts and our perplexities, and to walk even to the end of this earthly life by faith and not by sight. But the explanation is only delayed, and will without fail be given. When we come to stand at the close of this earthly course and look back upon life, not in the slow process of development, but in its completed form; when in the light of another world the missing links are supplied, and the subtle connections and far-off issues of things are discovered; when we come to know Him of whose wondrous plans the events which have perplexed us are the accomplishment, to "know even as we are known," and to be in possession of a

sympathy with Him in His aims which even the holiest do not attain here then the mystery which in the meantime rests on the divine procedure shall be cleared up; we shall know the meaning and the motive of providences which for the present sorely try our faith. We must hold fast by this hope at all hazards. We must maintain the conviction that as certain as is the present darkness, so certain is the future light; that as no part of the procedure of God towards His people is purposeless, so no doubt shall be left as to what the purpose of God was in every part of that procedure. This word of Christ to His disciple Peter will be fulfilled in the experience of all His own, and in relation to all that has befallen them, "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter."

There is, in the third place, the assurance, at least by implication, of the perfect satisfaction of God's people with His procedure towards them, when its purpose and meaning are made known. It is implied by the Saviour's words that the knowledge promised in them when it is imparted will remove all distrust of and dissatisfaction with the divine dealings; nay, that the dealings which now most perplex and try us will have our thankful acquiescence when their full meaning and far off issues are seen; that the purpose of God in the same will commend itself to us as equally wise and good, when that purpose is fully brought to light. The circumstance which seemed at first a discord in the life will be seen only to be a part of a higher and wider harmony, when the story of the whole life, and of other connected lives, is rehearsed. The change of view must be even greater than we can well conceive. As I have stood on the summit of a Swiss mountain, and looked down on a clear autumn morning on a floating sea of cloud covering the landscape for many miles, and marked its fleecy lightness, its distinct outline, its transparent purity, its fairy forms, etc., until the sun arose above the horizon, its motionless calm, an impression has been made and a memory left as of an object almost too wondrously beautiful to be a thing of earth. And yet to the dweller below, looking up at exactly the same object from his cottage door, it was only a thick, dark, gloomy mist, or perhaps a black and threatening cloud. Such difference does it make, from what side we view things, from above or from below, from the side which looks earthward or from the side which looks heavenward. Even so in life, circumstances which have filled us with apprehension or with gloom; events which have clouded our joy and tried our faith; may, or rather must, take on unexpected forms of grace and beauty to our life when they are looked at no longer from the earthward but from the heavenward side. And then, if not before, we shall be moved to exclaim in grateful adoration, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things to whom be glory for ever. Amen."

:

The application of the truths which have been now enunciated to the sorrowful event present to all our minds this morning is one which can be each made by any hearer, and which has no doubt been already made in thought by many.

It only remains for me to say a few words in regard to the personal character and public services of him who has been so suddenly and mysteriously removed from the scene in which he filled so large and so useful a place.

With the political principles and career of the deceased we have little to do in this place; we have to do with them at all only as they brought to light his moral qualities, or tended to promote the moral and religious well-being of the community. There is the less need of any attempt at a general characterization of the deceased; that testimony has been borne from so many different quarters, to the great vigour of his intellect, the kindling ardour of his enthusiasm, the force of his will, the largeness of his