larger portion of the society proved to be in accord with Mr. Ware's purposes and methods; and, having organized the Church of the Saviour, they put him at the head of the new religious movement, their meeting-places being the Masonic Temple in the morning and Ford's Opera House in the evening.

From 1867 to 1872, Mr. Ware was the minister of this congregation of the people; and, out of his believing heart and in his strong hands, the work became a ministry at large, in the public squares as well as in the play-house, and to not a few who habitually keep aloof from service and sermon. The preaching was characterized by great freedom and fervor. The hackmen came inside to listen and the gospel net gathered of every kind, and the highways and hedges and slums of the city were explored by evangelists. Mr. Ware was much interested at this time in the education. of the colored population, in homes and hospitals for our returned soldiers, always very near his heart, and in the missionary work of the American Unitarian Association.

more.

In this ministry at large, with its simplicity and directness, he recognized the crowning glory of his work in BaltiIt seemed to him very real and hopeful, and alive with the breath of our daily life; a distinctively religious revival, and yet without cant or fanaticism; a moral as truly as a spiritual reformation, a change of mind and heart toward the God who is before all a God of Righteousness. It was especially gratifying to find that on every side there was a softening of the prejudices which many had felt and manifested toward this uncompromising Unionist and Unitarian. It was not strange, perhaps, that he was an invited and honored guest at a great Jewish celebration, or that the leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church recognized in him a faithful friend and trusty adviser; but it was a very cheering sign of progress when the clergymen of other denominations called upon him, and were able to find some other name than "the Church of the Unbelievers" or "the Church of the Damned" for his congregation.

Not from any loss of interest or decline of faith in his

special work in Baltimore, but purely from the pressure of outward circumstances, our friend yielded at last to the earnest solicitation not only of this parish, but of a multitude of friends in this city; and, on the third day of November in the year 1872, he preached his first sermon as the minister of this church, a church so rich in proud and precious memories not only of ministers, but of those who have been ministered unto, and have entered into its deep and earnest and wise and tender spiritual life, and made the congregation a power in this city. It is, alas! but a few years ago; and I need not recall the auspicious beginnings of this earnest and devoted ministry, or picture the eager company that gathered to hear an opening sermon which should have been put into a more abiding form than the Monday morning newspaper could supply. To those who had long been worshippers, he added a large and enthusiastic company of young and old who had been awaiting his coming; and he found the way open, through a Sunday evening service, to bring in another multitude of more or less unchurched and wandering persons for whom, as his own experience in Baltimore and Swampscott had taught him, he had a message. I need not remind you of his earnest desire to cherish that old church life which the ministers and the people into whose labors he had entered had so well called forth and maintained. It was his care, while making a faithful use of such means as were already at hand, to create new opportunities, social gatherings within the congregation, and missions among those who were as sheep without a shepherd, following in this, as in much else, in the ways of his father, who was one of the founders, if not the founder of the ministry at large in our city, a ministry to which your late pastor gave much of his last strength, and almost his last thoughts, asking your continuance in that love and care and liberality which, beyond all others, you have shown toward it. When the Sunday evening crowd began to ebb,— for there is an inevitable tide of the multitude as well as of the ocean,- he was prompt to avail himself of any other opportunity to reach those who will not come to ordinary

church services. His heart was largely not only with his own congregation, but with his outside people to the end. He has said to me, more than once, that he felt in these last years more at home on the platform than in the pulpit of a church, just as one who has lived a good deal in the open air is not quite at ease in the most comfortable dwelling; but I am sure that the pulpit, as well as the platform, became him well, and, with its minimum of formality, could hardly have been distasteful to him.

While he entertained honest doubts as to the value in our day of much of the ordinary parochial routine, I know that he was ever the sharer of your joys and sorrows, and never failed to meet any call of parishioner or friend for sympathy and help in the time of trouble. What he craved he gave. He had too many moods of his own not to have regard to the moods of others. He was tender and affectionate; and, if he loved you, he loved you.

So far as I have gathered from the report of others, or have had opportunity to form my own opinion, the preaching of your minister has been steadily deepening in its tone as he has grown into your knowledge and sympathy, and that richer experience which years bring to every living

man.

During the whole of the winter of 1879 and 1880, his friends could not fail to see that his work was done with great effort, and that he needed the rest which so many in our profession are permitted to enjoy midway, if not earlier, in life. As is the way with the overwrought, he paused against his will. I suppose that it was labor for him to enter into rest and to go away from his work; but those of you who urged him to the stop will be glad to be told what a pleasure it has been to him to retrace in thought his paths through the great waters and his journeyings beyond the sea, especially in that land which we are so ready to quarrel with, and yet so glad and proud to claim as our mother country.

It was one of his pleasant thoughts, and even a hope, so persistently did he entertain the possibility of recovery, that

he might revisit that dear old England with the returning summer. But God had provided for him other things, I should add a better country; but I recall certain words of the old grandfather, the Hollis Professor, words which seemed to show how thoroughly he and his grandson were at one in a healthy appreciation of this world. Said he, "There seems to me to be something almost ungrateful in our asking for a better world, as if this were not already much too good for us."

He found a quiet resting-place in Milton, one of his homes; but it proved a weary winter, especially during the last weeks. 66 Tired Nature's sweet restorer brought no balm to him for all those long dark nights. For a while, the disease had seemed to be in abeyance; but presently it came back with seven-fold strength, until at last there dawned a day when his clear, calm thought was much occupied with his two voyages and their lessons of trust, which, as he said, he would gladly write into a sermon,-a day, like all the rest, of great courage and patience, but which was to be his last on earth. "At evening time there was light": after a few moments of sharp pain, he passed beyond the reach of human offices and the sight of mortal eyes; and it remained only to commend his spirit to God, who gave, and to lay away the precious dust in the last resting-place to be gathered unto its kindred dust. In this church, he lay in death before us, he whose presence had so often been a sweet benediction in the house of sorrow, and whose earnest prayers had so often and so tenderly uttered the mourners' undying hope and need of comfort and the peace of God. Said David Livingstone, "Man is immortal until his work is done." Somewhere, somehow, we believe that our friend shall pursue and compass his chief end. And have any human words told us what that is better than we were taught in the old catechism, "The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever"?

In the autumn of 1862, almost a score of years ago, your late minister wrote thus, in his simple, beautiful fashion, of the "Voice of God in the Garden": We are apt to consider

66

the voice of the autumn as only a dull chant of decay. It has a funereal tone, a voice as from tombs. I think the voice of God in the garden is different. It is not at all of decay, but of the perfected life of the things fading. They have done his work. What he created them for is accomplished. Decay is ripeness with God, and ripeness never makes sad. He calls our attention to these completed lives, and then bids us look at our own. He furnishes us with examples of fidelity in the mute decay of things about us, and urges us to examine and see how our lives will compare with theirs." May the Holy Spirit, the blessed Teacher and Comforter, take these words of the preacher, whose voice has dropped into silence, and write them upon our hearts, that, being dead, he may yet speak to us of the life which now is and of that which is to come!

GEORGE BARRELL EMERSON, LL.D.

George B. Emerson was born in Wells, Maine, on the twelfth day of September, 1797; and he died at the house of his son-in-law, Hon. John Lowell, at Chestnut Hill, Brookline, in March, 1881. Those who like to trace distinguishing qualities through different generations may be interested to learn that his father, a country physician of large practice, had some striking characteristics of an accomplished teacher, and that his grandfather, the revered Congregational minister of Hollis, N.H., was noted through all the county of Hillsborough for his skill in preparing boys for college.

From his childhood, George was haunted by a love of knowledge amounting almost to a passion, especially in his intercourse with natural objects. As a country boy, attending school only a part of the time, working on his father's farm, managing a boat and going out on fishing excursions, he sought always to gain some accurate knowledge of the plants and living creatures around him. The fields and the