PUBLIC MEETING, HARRISTON.

TOWN HALL, HARRISTON, May 17th, 1880.

A meeting of the citizens of the town of Harriston and township of Minto assembled in the Council Chamber this afternoon for the purpose of passing resolutions of condolence at the death of the Hon. George Brown, which, owing to the absence of the Mayor last week, and other uncontrollable circumstances, was not held until to-day-A. Meiklejohn, Mayor, in the chair, and M. P. Empey, Secretary. The following resolutions were passed:

Moved by Mr. Prain, Warden of the county of Wellington, seconded by Mr. S. Robertson,

That this meeting of citizens of the town of Harriston and township of Minto, hereby desires to express deep sorrow at the untimely death of the Hon. George Brown, senator of the Dominion, and the great regret felt by this community at large in the demise of one of Canada's most patriotic and distinguished statesmen. This meeting recognizing the greatness and extent of the services rendered by the deceased as a journalist and statesman, as well as the efforts put forth by him in advancing Canadian agriculture-giving his whole life with zeal and energy to the best interests of his adopted country, an unceasing advocate of civil and religious liberty of the people-Canada has, therefore, in the opinion of this meeting, lost one of its most able and talented public men, and looks upon the loss of the great senator as a national calamity.-Carried.

Moved by Mr. T. G. Lambert, seconded by Mr. George Preston,

That the mayor and secretary of this meeting convey to the widow and family of the deceased a copy of the resolution, expressing the warm sympathy felt by this meeting and of this community at large in their severe and trying affliction.-Carried.

A. MEIKLEJOHN, Mayor.
M. P. EMPEY, Secretary.

ST. ANDREW'S SOCIETY, BARRIE.

BARRIE, 18th May, 1880.

At the regular meeting of the St. Andrew's Society of Barrie, it was Moved by Wm. Hunter, Esq., seconded by Wm. Milne, Esq., and Resolved,-1st. That we, the members of the St. Andrew's Society of Barrie, have learned with profound regret of the death of our fellowcountryman, the Hon. George Brown-a man whose life has been an honour alike to the land of his birth and of his adoption. By the energy, consistency, and indomitable pluck with which he advocated every measure which he deemed calculated to advance the material interests of his country, by the hearty support which he gave to every cause tending to better mankind, his name has become among us a household word, and we feel that in his death Canada has suffered an almost irreparable loss.

2nd. That this Society desire to express their deepest sympathy with the widow and relatives of the deceased senator in the hour of their great grief, and to convey to them a heartfelt expression of profound sorrow that a life which had been spent so far above reproach, so kindly among his friends, and so eminently useful to his country, should have such a sad end.

3rd. That the secretary be instructed to send to the family a copy of these resolutions.

D. FARQUHARSON, President.
G. McCUAIG, Secretary.

WEST ELGIN REFORM ASSOCIATION.

Moved by Peter Stalker, seconded by Col. C. A. O'Malley,

That this association takes this the first available opportunity, to express regret at the sad and untimely death of the Honourable George Brown, the staunch advocate of reform principles during a most important era of Canada's history. His honest and unswerving advocacy of every measure he deemed for the welfare of his country and humanity won for him the love, esteem and respect of all classes in the community. We take this occasion to convey to those nearest and dearest friends of the deceased statesman our heartfelt sympathy in their affliction and bereave

ment.

Signed on behalf of the Reform Association of West Elgin by

JOHN MCCALLUM, President,
THOS. URQUHART, Secretary.

COLLINGWOOD TOWN COUNCIL.

MAYOR'S OFFICE, May 11, 1880.

Moved by Mr. Burness, seconded by Mr. Lockerbie,

That this Council have heard with deep regret of the untimely end of the Hon. George Brown, who, as a patriot and statesman, has left his mark on the history of Canada.

That we sincerely lament his death, especially under the circumstances that has taken him from us, and that by it the Dominion has lost a true friend.

And that the Clerk be instructed to send a copy of this resolution to his afflicted family.

[Seal.]

A. BLIGH, Clerk.

FROM "GRIP."

The varying noises cease,

And pitying men, jaded or jubilant before,
Pall neath the common grief.

The cortege passes now in princely circumstance,

'Mid quiet thousands in the city's streets,

While the aspiring throb of anxious hearts,
Busy and buffeted in life's rough way,

Is mute in conscious widowhood.

Ah! he was noble who lay coffined there—

A peer in Nature's aristocracy;

Bearing the unction of that generous grace, which in the life
Wins love from toiling men,

And, dying, summons them like children round the tomb.

So pass away, great spirit,

But thy work, so well and truly done,

Shall stand a witness to thy goodness and thy gifts.

On that enduring pile a superscription,

Written in letters that shall ever glow,
May tell the rugged grandeur of his life
In simple narrative;

How homespun worth and royal honesty
Braved the distempers of ambition's path,
From youth of filial love and lofty thought,

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 impli cation, 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 canst 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." 29

66

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 affirmed 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.