The New Ministers Great Opportunity | Page 5

country and in France, Lafayette, the mere mention of whose name brings tears to the eyes of every true American, came to see the America that he loved and that loved him, he on whose cold, rigid face I now look down, joined in one of those enthusiastic throngs that made the visit like a Roman Triumph.
"But turn to the world of Nature, and think of the panoramic scenes that have passed before those now impassive eyes. In our friend's boyhood there was no practical mode of swift communication of news. In great emergencies, to be sure, some patriot hand might flash the beacon-light from a lofty tower; but news crept slowly over our hand-breath nation, and it was months after a presidential election before the result was generally known. He lived to see the telegraph flashing swiftly about the globe, annihilating time and space and bringing the scattered nations into greater unity.
"And think, my hearers, for one moment, of the wonders of electricity. Here is a power which we name but do not know; which flashes through the sky, shatters great trees, burns buildings, strikes men dead in the fields; and we have learned to lead it, all unseen, from our house-tops to the earth; we tame this mighty, secret, unknown power into serving us as a a daily messenger; and no man sets the limits now to the servitude that we shall yet bind it down to.
"Again, my hearers, when our friend was well advanced in life, there was still no better mode of travel between distant points than the slow, rumbling stage-coach; many who are here remember well its delays and discomforts. He saw the first tentative efforts of that mighty factor steam to transport more swiftly. He saw the first railroad built in the country; he lived to see the land covered with the iron net-work.
"And what a transition is this! Pause for a moment to consider it. How much does this imply. With the late improvements in agricultural machinery, with the cheapening of steel rails, the boundless prairie farms of the West are now brought into competition with the fields of Great Britain in supplying the Englishman's table, and seem not unlikely, within this generation, to break down the aristocratic holding of land, and so perhaps to undermine aristocracy itself."
So the preacher continued, speaking of different improvements, and lastly of the invention of daguerreotypes and photographs. He called the attention of his hearers to this almost miraculous art of indelibly fixing the expression of a countenance, and drew a lesson as to the permanent effect of our daily looks and expression on those among whom we live. He considered at length the vast amount of happiness which had been caused by bringing pictures of loved ones within the reach of all; the increase of family affection and general good feeling which must have resulted from the invention; he suggested a possible change in the civilization of the older nations through the constant sending home, by prosperous adopted citizens, of photographs of themselves and of their homes, and alluded to the effect which this must have had upon immigration.
Finally he adverted to the fact that the sons of the deceased, who sat before him, had not yielded to the restless spirit of adventure, but had found "no place like home."
"But I fear," he said at last, "that the interest of my subject has made me transgress upon your patience; and with a word or two more I will close.
"When we remember what hard, trying things often arise within a single day, let us rightly estimate the patient well-doing of a man who has lived a blameless life for a hundred years. When we remember what harm, what sin, can be crowded into a single moment, let us rightly estimate the principle that kept him so close to the Golden Rule, not for a day, not for a decade or a generation, but for a hundred years.
"And now, as we are about to lay his deserted body in the earth, let not our perceptions be dulled by the constant repetition in this world of death and burial. At this hour our friend is no longer aged; wrinkles and furrows, trembling limbs and snowy locks he has left behind him, and he knows, we believe, to-day, more than the wisest philosopher on earth. We may study and argue, all our lives, to discover the nature of life, or the form it takes beyond the grave; but in one moment of swift transition the righteous man may learn it all. We differ widely one from another, here, in mental power. A slight hardening of some tissue of the brain might have left a Shakspeare an attorney's clerk. But, in the brighter world, no such impediments prevent, I believe, clear