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RECOLLECTIONS

OF

REV. F. W. P. GREENWOOD, D. D.

A SERMON PREACHED AFTER HIS DEATH, AND SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS.

Nathaniel Lan, dan God

PRINTED FOR THE

American Unitarian Association.

BOSTON:

JAMES MUNROE & CO., 134 WASHINGTON STREET. FFBRUARY, 1845.

Price 4 Cents.

BOSTON:

PRINTED BY THURSTON, TORRY AND CO.

31, Devonshire Street.

SERMON

PREACHED IN KING'S CHAPEL,

BY

Nachaniel Langdon

REV. N. L. FROTHINGHAM, D. D.

WHEN I AM DEAD, THEN BURY ME IN THE SEPULCHRE WHEREIN THE MAN OF GOD IS BURIED."-1 Kings, xiii. 31.

A TOMв has been opened among you since we last assembled here for our usual services. A man of God has been laid in it. Let me call him so, and put some stress upon the title, and dwell upon it with a melancholy pleasure. It belongs to every good man who serves his Maker by serving his generation, and who walks humbly before Him, on whose hand we are all so dependent as we go through with our responsible and transient lives. But it belonged to him in an unusual measure. The late pastor of this church was of no ordinary stamp of goodness. His service was beyond the usual kind. His conversation with heaven was of no common closeness and constancy. He fulfilled a holy office, of which he felt all the sacredness; - that was sullied in nothing by being touched with his revering hands; - to which few have been so deeply devoted, and in which few have been so tenderly beloved.

Was

he not a man of God?" But his "sepulchre" has been prepared by the decree of that sovereign wisdom, which he never questioned, and to which we with uncomplaining tears submit, and God has "buried" him. Gradually, for his strength wasted day by day, and yet suddenly, for death is always sudden, he sunk down under the pressure of a disease that was as stealthy as it was deadly; and with all his faculties and affections about him, he departed out of our sight. A tranquil, constant spirit, that had long stood waiting, — and this he told you, when his venerable colleague died, was perhaps the most "difficult post of duty," he has at length found we know not how much more than his release.

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But two days ago, his wasted form was brought here for the last religious offices, where he was wont to come in all the stages of his life; where he worshipped as a boy, and I was a witness how seriously; and where he preached the truths of the divine gospel with a chaste zeal, and a clear reason, and a deeply moved spirit, and a pathetic sweetness, of which you all were the witnesses, and of which there are but rare examples. Alas, that his eloquent tongue must have been thus mute in the assembly of his people! He was buried according to his own direction, given with his characteristic simplicity. There was found among his papers, not till the second day after his departure, one that bore the plain inscription, "My Funeral." With the even and sedate hand that corresponded well with the mind that dictated it, it enjoined that there should be no deviation from the common service of the church; but expressed a preference that instead of the funeral hymn there might be the

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chanting of the psalm, which begins, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," and goes on with the devout confidence, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," and closes in an almost triumphant tone, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever; - that house which has many mansions, eternal in the heavens. Was not this as if he desired, in the immediate prospect of his dissolution, and even with his dead lips, to utter his sense of the experience he had enjoyed of the divine goodness? "I would,” it goes on, "that not a word should be said concerning what may be considered my character or deservings, at that solemn hour when in the house of God and presence of his holiness, my poor remains are waiting to be consigned to the earth. Let the voice of the church only be heard in those words, mostly from sacred scripture, which are used in our mother country impartially for prince and peasant, and which are certainly sufficient for me." That restriction is now taken off. I cannot stand in this shrouded pulpit, that has been his for these nineteen years, and not speak of him. These mournful draperies insist upon their subject. You have come to hear some feeble tribute to so strong a character and so dear a memory. Only let me speak with that sober regard to the unexaggerated truth, which was so fixed a principle in him. I should be afraid of offending his shade by a single word of indiscriminate eulogy, or rhetorical artifice, or overstrained description.

My mind returns to the affecting scene that was so lately presented in this house of your devotions. The eyes that you there saw closed had once a sensibility, more than is given to most men, to all that was admiraNO. 211.

VOL. XVIII.

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