A SERMON PREACHED AT SOMERVILLE, ON THE SUNDAY AFTER THE FUNERAL OF REV. CHARLES LOWE, BY

REV. HENRY H. BARBER.

"I must work the work of Him that sent me while it is day: for the night cometh, when no man can work”” — JOHN ix. 4.

In bringing you to-day some further words concerning our dear friend and your former pastor, I am aware that my offering may seem superfluous. The burden of our sorrow and the promise of our comfort have both been uttered. We have spoken together of our love and of our loss. We have felt our blessing in his life, and our blessing in the peace of his departure. We have watched the disappearing glow of the mounting chariot, and turned -—well, if with the mantle caught from his ascending spirit—to smite the waters which part us from the next work that waits our hands. It is wonderful how soon even the heaviest trial adjusts itself to our experience, and comes to have a strange familiarity, so that we can hardly realize that there ever was a time when we were not in its shadow.

But we would not, we ought not to turn away too suddenly from the lessons of an experience like this. Such bereavement becomes, through holy and happy recollections, a sacrament of gratitude and strengthening cheer. If there is a morbid grief which dwells too constantly and too long in the shadow of bereavement, sapping the energies of the soul and going far to cloud the world, there is also a selfish and shallow lightness which is impatient of the shadows, and unwilling to wait in the darkness while God's angels of sorrow do their work of discipline and instruction, and leave at length their healing benediction. The pressure of events usually comes strongly and soon enough to crowd the special trial into its proportioned place in our varied life; and we may well wait the Providential order, not striving to elude our burdens, but only seeking to gain their lessons and to bear them well.

Surely we whose sense of personal loss, however great, is less absorbing, may well take care that the grateful and tender emotions which have been stirred in us by the passing from among us of a life of such usefulness and worth, a spirit of so much sweetness and strength, with the peace and joy which transfigured death into deliverance, shall not be too readily displaced by the next interest that claims our thought. Doubtless, goodness makes its mark unfailingly; but certainly, too, that goodness whose memory we cherish and renew, makes deepest impress on us.

Besides, there are some portions of the services which Mr. Lowe fulfilled which have not yet been dwelt upon, and some very precious memories which have not here, at least, been adequately recalled. Of his various abilities, of the qualities that made up his general character, and of the work of his public life, nothing can be said to-day so just and so discriminating as what has been said already. The openness of his nature, the singleness and frankness of his purposes, and the heartiness and energy which he carried into every sphere of life he entered, made him to be well known and well loved in widely varying circles; and there are many far and near who will bear witness, with tender and grateful appreciation, to the same characteristic virtues, the same generous and kindly and engaging qualities. But of what he was among us and to this community, of the qualities which

endeared him to those who knew him in the more personal and private relations of intimate friendship and companionship, of the many testimonies to his help in exigencies of difficulty or trial, and of those last days in which the quality of his spirit shone forth with wonderful brightness and beauty in the dissolving of the earthly tabernacle, something further may here be said.

The career of Charles Lowe was a long series of high undertakings, of grand beginnings. There was something almost sublime in the steadfastness and energy, no less than the patience and sweetness, with which, when forbidden to carry on for any long time a chosen course of usefulness, he returned again and again to the work which commanded his heart and life. If to have lived always in the life of noble causes, if to have struggled manfully with weariness and weakness, if to have felt himself, working or resting to work again, a part of the great ministry of Christian service, however holden or straitened, still a helper of men to the light and strength of divine realities, if this be to have lived successfully and well, then his life is fortunate and full. There was a healthy spirit in his weak, frail body which never lost sympathy with the largest enterprises and the loftiest aims. "Not only do we need God, but God needs us," are well-remembered words he spoke on the day I first knew him; and they expressed the watchword of his spirit and the key of all his life.

But his success was not only that of high endeavor. There are attained results which would not shame a vigorous body and a longer life. Each of his pastoral settlements, though brief and broken, leaves a well-attested record of useful work and of efficient service rendered in times of sorest need, a witness borne now that he is gone, with tender words and grateful tears. And in the larger work which he did for the church, and in the various enterprises that he projected or helped to carry out, his industry and constancy and executive talent, joined to his large charity, persuasiveness and kindness of spirit, made his endeavors remarkably successful and his work more than usually effective.

There is a lesson for us all in the resolute purpose with which he made the broken strength of his interrupted labors effective for so rich and generous results of a lifetime's work. The fact of uncertain health and probable interruption was accepted by him,

not as ground of exemption from the responsible work of life, but as incitement to constant diligence and careful husbanding of all the fragments of strength and opportunity. He owed much of his efficiency to his habits of trained and patient labor. Mr. Lowe was systematic in thought and word. Never hurrying, he never procrastinated. Few men are so orderly and businesslike in their intellectual habits; few so far-sighted and comprehensive in their plans of future work. There is an instance of this in the fact that, notwithstanding his extreme debility, one of his last acts was to dictate the arrangement so far as practicable of the number of "The Review," which would not appear for six weeks after his departure. His powers were all remarkably well in hand. He was ready, tactful, discriminating. This made him able to discharge delicate and even painful duties, which his earnest purpose to compose difference and harmonize difficulties sometimes led him to undertake, when any one less gentle and delicately discriminating would have failed, and when one less generous and courageous in duty would have refused to mediate. He was more practical than imaginative. He did not spend his strength in dreaming of things he could not attempt. What he dared to dream of,

he dared to do.

He was fruitful in beneficent projects; yet these were not chimeras, but practicable plans, thoroughly thought out, and almost sure to be executed or at least attempted, if their fulfilment depended at all upon himself. What interest of our community or of our country was there in which his interest also was not warm and active? There is hardly any department of our higher life which his thought did not grasp, and in which his fertile sagacity did not meditate some possible improvement or correction. And in how few matters of high importance has he not contributed an intelligent judgment, and the help of his personal influence and effort.

During the war he was constantly finding or making opportunities of service, from the time when his ringing voice was heardin our public square, summoning the citizen to the duty of the hour, to that Sunday at the close of the conflict, when, with the fresh news of Lincoln's assassination bearing upon his heart, he helped to reorganize the dismantled church at Charleston on the