Chapter 6

Among the richest inheritances of any people is that of the living names and ever living influence of its noblest men and women. Even though they have joined "the choir invisible," they still remain, a possession and a power for all time. For there are no influences more real, if any that are stronger, than the silent-working influence of personal ideas; and whoever it is that helps to ennoble our ideal conceptions of character, and to make these clearer and more vivid, does us a vital service for which we may fitly be thankful, both to God and to them. This American Missionary Association is already rich in its "inheritance in the saints."

It is no exaggeration to say, although it is very much to say, that James Powell had come to be the most peculiarly and widely beloved man in our denomination. That this was so was not owing to any one quality, but must have been due to a singularly happy combination and balance of qualities. Every one thought of him as a man having a genius for popular eloquence. But he had also as truly unique gifts and graces for personal friendship. Without a particle of cant, he possessed profound religious faith and devotion. He walked with God and had no gifts which were not consciously devoted to his service. At the same time he was intensely human. He never affected to be ethereal. He was a son of man, a child of nature. And he touched life at many points. His sympathy was immensely more than mere pity. He was instinctively, as well as religiously generous. Open hearted, open minded, genuine to the core, quick, sensitive, responsive, impulsive, enthusiastic; whatever he did, he did with a will and noble zest. Happy in a certain "divine sense of victory and success," he also delighted keenly in the successes of others; and there was that about him which made every one wish him to succeed, expect him to succeed, and apt to tell him so when he had done well. And yet he was, to a singular degree, free from any promptings of personal vanity. He had pride but was not proud; least of all was he conceited. He never did poorly; he almost always did brilliantly; there was not an indolent fibre in his being. He did well because he exerted himself to do his best. He was happy in the power God gave him, and accepted joyously the opportunities which others eagerly offered him for doing the things that were in line with the main purpose of his life.

He had an exquisitely sure and alert sense of honor. He could not do a mean thing. He won friends, and never lost any; because all felt that he was not only so genuine and unselfish, so bright and full of happy humor, so deep and exuberant in affection, but that he was so perfectly to be trusted. No one knew better his own rights, or was less wanting in any courage that might be needed to maintain them. He was capable of high degrees of indignation, and his life work, championing the rights of wronged and depressed classes and races, furnished him with but too many occasions for holy anger. His soul often burned with intensest indignation. When one night the people in Quitman, Georgia, burned over their heads the seminary for colored girls, or when the Georgia Legislature was enacting the infamy of the Glenn Bill, his heart was hot as any Babylonian furnace, aflame with indignation, as though touched with the divine wrath, the anger of love. And yet not for a moment could one detect in him any spark of bitterness or malice.

But chilled now is that heart of flame; stilled now are the mighty pulsations of that better than chivalric spirit, which up and down the land, all over the East and the West, during those fourteen years, did so much to _educate the churches_, and to remind the country of the "kindness and love of God our Saviour, which hath appeared toward man," and which ought with all possible celerity to be manifested by men, by men of all races and of all classes, toward one another, and to promote which this American Missionary Association finds supremely its reason to be.

The Society has had, has, and will have, other men in its service of splendid personal characteristics and having peculiar fitness for the signally providential parts assigned them in this great work, which ought to fire the heart of every Christian in the land. One we have, thank God, still among us, equally loved and revered, who has long stood at the front in this mighty and benignant enterprise--may the day be slow in coming when his great heart shall be missed from these yearly councils! And still we may be sure that the resources neither of our humanity nor of the grace of God are in any danger of being exhausted.

James Powell's Welsh blood was in his favor. His American boyhood and training helped fit him for what was to come. That whispered word of a Christian lady to a young man whose conversion, in turn, led to the conversion of young Powell, proved to be a word of destiny. And his experience abroad with the Jubilee Singers, in whose tones was voiced the pathos of three silent centuries, had, also, not a little to do in fitting him for the work God had in store for him.

It is, therefore, easy to see how fortunate this society was in having such a man for its personal representative; and, how fortunate the churches also were in having the most characteristic spirit and motive and aim of the cause he stood for so fittingly impersonated. That fond mother of the famous English missionary who is reported to have said, that "as for her son, the race of God could find but little to do in him," did not speak for James Powell. God had given him splendid gifts to begin with, but it was the grace of God in him that first saved him from making shipwreck of those gifts, and then taught him how to use them so exhaustively in his service.

This Society represents above all things an educational enterprise. It has many schools, chartered and unchartered, throughout the South and West. We can never admire too much this far-reaching educational undertaking. But, the Society is itself, in certain most fundamental respects, the very "head-master" in the school of the churches, in the school of the nation. And how beautifully, how superbly, how effectively did this brother of ours shine and burn among the churches of our land, as one commissioned of heaven to help teach us the reality of meaning there is in this word of our Lord, how he said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

His memory we shall all, and always, affectionately cherish. For the service which he rendered to the cause which we also love, we will be devoutly thankful. If we have gotten any good from the life which he lived before us, we can show it by the growing warmth and completeness of our own enlistment in the same cause. Cries Mrs. Browning at Cowper's grave:

O Poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing; O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging; O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling Groaned inly while he taught you peace and died while ye were smiling.

But not in _that_ way was Powell the teacher of hope and of peace and of joy to us. He showed the way of the cross and all the morning light of hope, because he himself had found it! And how lustrous and mighty and winning did his own way of life serve to make all this way appear to be.

O face, all radiant with light of love; O eyes, so laughing in their tenderness. So quick to read the language of distress; O lips, so touched with flame as from above--

We have seen that sweet vision, and all the way before us shall be the clearer, and we the stronger, because of it. And the sweet memory of our brother shall remain to us.

Like some clear large star, which pilgrims, At their back leave, and see not always; Yet wheresoever they list, may turn, And with its glories gild their faces still!

For himself, he has ascended to the mountains of myrrh and the hill of frankincense, and has seen the day break and the shadows flee away. But, brothers, let us cherish no such idle notion as though James Powell had now forgotten, or has ceased to be interested in the Chinaman, the Indian and the Negro, in America.

EULOGY BY REV. DR. IDE.

If there is any special fitness in inviting me to speak on this occasion, it lies in the fact that Dr. Powell was an intimate friend of mine. Outside of the circle of my own home, there was no one with whom I ever held such close and familiar relationship as with him. Our acquaintance began in the early days of college life, when our nation was in the throes of a civil war. We were not members of the same class, but were brought together quite frequently through the literary society to which we both belonged. During this period our relations were simply cordial. Unconsciously the advice of that witty old divine, Thomas Fuller, was being followed: "Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath."

Dr. Powell graduated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1866, while my graduation took place the previous year, in the class of 1865. My first year out of college was spent in teaching in my native town. When the decision was reached of entering the Theological Seminary, it was mutually agreed that we should go to Andover and room together. From that time on our intimacy grew apace. We passed three years together as chums; but that relation did not cease when we separated and each went his own way to the field of labor where the Lord had appointed. The last letter that I received from him, (and I have been informed that it was the last letter that he ever wrote, which reached me only the day before the despatch that apprised me of his death), began in that same old familiar fashion, "My dear Chum." I have thus made reference to matters somewhat personal, that the standpoint from which I speak may be more clearly understood. I have "summered and wintered him;" I have been permitted to know him within and without; I have been with him in season and out of season; I have studied with him; I have prayed with him; I have loved him as a brother.

It is more in accord with the promptings of my heart to speak a few words suggested by intimacy and long acquaintance with Dr. Powell. Many learned to respect and honor him through the abundance of his labors in the broad field to which God in his providence called him for service. But there is another side to that life, private, personal, even more attractive and richly suggestive to those who knew him best and were permitted to enjoy his friendship.

Our brother did not possess the conventional qualities which sometimes are associated with the "cloth." He was without that endless gravity which could almost fittingly grace a pedestal. That pious deacon who had not "snickered" for above forty years, would have found his moral sensitiveness somewhat disturbed by the free, untrammelled way in which he spoke and acted. There was no monotony in his make-up. He was natural--natural as devoid of all cant and affected airs. When you met him, you had not come upon some person trumped for the occasion; it was Powell, the very man you wanted to see. He could not be anything but himself. Genuineness and unaffected simplicity were revealed in him, as in few others. He could be as serious as a country judge; but he was serious because the matter was in him, and it was the hour for seriousness. He could be as playful as a child, but it was because the play was in him and it was time for play. When our brother was pastor of the North Church, in Newburyport, it was our custom to meet every Monday morning in Boston. On one occasion, a brother-in-law of mine, a boy in his teens, accompanied me to Boston, where we were to meet Mr. Powell. We soon found ourselves tramping about the city on errands. Mr. Powell was effervescing with fun. At such seasons, and they were very frequent, he took great pleasure in making me the victim of his frolicsomeness. On this occasion, I found that Mr. Powell had enlisted the boy in the scheme of hiding away from me every chance they could get. Passing through a crowd, I would look around and discover that they had absconded; and then it devolved on me to hunt them up, I never shall forget how this manoeuvering interested that boy. He came up to me and whispered the first opportunity he had, "He is the funniest minister that I ever saw in my life." That was his first visit with Mr. Powell, but it was not the last. On that day an attachment was formed which has lasted through all these years. A little boy, four years old, in Oak Park, where Mr. Powell resided for some time, was asked by his father, what he wanted to do when he got to be a man, and answered: "Be a minister and go hunting like Mr. Powell." He was a man for the boys. He touched a responsive chord in their nature. He could enjoy what they enjoyed with as keen a relish as they themselves.

He was the very soul of friendship; he had a genius for it. The friends that he made are only limited by the want of personal contact with him. In the making of them it may be said "He came, he saw, he conquered." How wide he opened his arms to receive us! There were no partition walls to be levelled before we approached him. It required no studied effort to get at him. The way was always clear; the door was without a latch-string even; it was open. You never had to ask, Is Mr. Powell in a proper mood to see his friends to-day? Why, it was worth a journey of fifty miles just to meet that man and receive a grasp of his hand! I remember going to a depot in Chicago to meet him as he came in on the train. As soon as he singled me out from the crowd, he rushed towards me, exclaiming in his bantering way: "Well, well, well, this is the first sensible thing I ever knew you to do, come on old fellow;" and he grasped my arm and hurried me away, saying, "I am just glad to see you." When it is said, that he is the "best beloved of all," is it not because he first loved us? The generosity and friendliness of his soul captured our hearts. I imagine that many thousands of dollars were poured into the treasury of the A.M.A. evoked by the love kindled in hearts for our brother. Men came to love the cause through him who loved them.

Mr. Powell was a man of enthusiasm; he worked at white heat. The logic of his whole life seemed to be, "What I do I must do quickly." He could not stop; he must hurry on. He could pass easily from one thing to another. In all the years of my acquaintance with him I never knew him to rest as other people rest. If his body was not active his mind was. The river of his life had no sluggish intervals; it was a torrent from first to last. His step was a bound; his thought rushed in its movement. He could write a sermon in less time than any other man in the seminary, so far as I know. Plans came to him like an inspiration and were unfolded with a rapidity that seemed to me wonderful. His scholarship was not technical. He always enjoyed the larger sweep of things. He would have been the last man to devote his life to the Greek preterite, and to question whether it would not have been better to have confined himself to the dative case! Such minutiae of erudition might be fascinating to others; it was not for him. His large-heartedness, his sympathy, his wealthy and generous spirit could not be condensed into a bookworm, or a recluse. They rather equipped him to become a watchman, that he might declare what he saw. He needed the whole Republic to range up and down in. His ringing words might be heard on our Western frontier; but before their echoes had scarcely died away, their wakening notes might be taken up and reiterated on our New England coast. He was a voice crying in the land. Like the Great Master, he was sent to "heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised." It was the down-trodden races for which he lived. Such a candle of the Lord would burn down to its socket before the day was half spent. Such hot haste and burning zeal must consume to ashes before the meridian is turned.

Oftentimes have I thought of our brother in connection with a remark once made by Rufus Choate. Mr. Choate was an over-worked man, and in his later years, the tension under which he was laboring was quite apparent. He was met by a friend on the street one morning who reminded him of his careworn appearance. Said his friend, "Your labors are too unremitting, and what is worse, you are endangering your constitution." "Ah!" said Mr. Choate, "my constitution was gone long ago; I am living on the by-laws now." In the last years of his life, it seemed to me that our brother was living on the by-laws of his constitution.

He was aware that but a brittle thread kept his earthly moorings; but this did not deter him; he must work while the day lasted; for the night cometh when no man can work. While the vital spark remained, he would not, indeed we may say, he could not stay his hand. And so in the midst of his years God took him.

What a privilege to have walked with him in the fellowship of love, and to have enjoyed the richness and fullness of his friendship! What springs of tenderness in his nature ready to gush forth to refresh and quicken the tendrils of a drooping heart. How the sorrows of others found echo and response in his own soul. The grim messenger death once entered my own home, and made all a desert and a desolation. I never can forget the letter that I received from our brother at that time. What melting tenderness and sympathy were expressed in it! He was smitten and afflicted; he was wounded and bruised for my sake. It was as if he was the stricken one and not myself. But I could not account, however, at the moment, for the blotted and blurred appearance of the writing. But it was all explained in a postscript. "Please excuse the writing. I could not keep the tears back; they fell so thick and fast as nearly to destroy the legibility of my letter." How can we help loving such a man? He took up the sorrows of others and made them his own; aye more, he took up the woes of a race and made them his own. When did the colored man have a better and more faithful friend than he? Who was more completely and absolutely identified with his interests than he? Burn down the colored man's school house through the malign influence of caste feeling, and you had kindled in his soul the fires of an indignation which quite eclipsed the original conflagration.

I have been permitted to observe the advancement and development of his faith. As the years carried him forward in his course, that faith assumed stronger as well as more graceful and beautiful outlines. He was not one who never had doubts or questionings. The difficulties of belief as well as unbelief, were not unknown to him. But when he took up the mighty task to which he consecrated his life, and was left to grapple with illiteracy, superstition and the needs of a benighted and down-trodden people, knotty questions in theology no longer vexed him, for he recognized that there was but one all-sufficient solvent for the dark problems which thrust themselves into the foreground, and that was the redemptive power of the Gospel of Christ. Men may be puzzled and perplexed concerning the theory of sunshine, but there are no questionings on the subject that can override the practical effect of the sun. The sun shines in spite of our metaphysics! Our brother advanced into the practical aspects of faith, and had the assurance that Christ was the light of the world, in spite of our theories of inspiration.

He had an unbounded faith in applied Christianity. There was nothing it could not do in the way of recasting and uplifting the despised peoples of the land. We had but to go forward in the name and power of our great Leader to effect the national redemption. But I must not detain you longer. He has gone out from us. His mission is ended here. Those eloquent lips must remain forever sealed on earth. He simply ceases to be seen of us. We follow his path of translation with mingled tears and joy. The future life, whose place is beyond the skies, was a matter of great concern to him. I recall the hour when he returned to his room from a lecture on the immortality of the soul. He was almost overcome by the discussion which was being carried on in the class-room. He wanted the subject taken out of the realm of probability, and brought to the test of certainty and demonstration. "O, chum!" he exclaimed, "I wish I might die now; I can hardly wait for the demonstration!" He did not wait long. The bending heavens caught up his spirit, and he has gone into the holy city through the beautiful gate which opens over all graves.

"Thus saints, that seem to die in earth's rude strife, only win double life; they have but left our weary ways to live in memory here, in Heaven by love and praise."

EULOGY BY DR. STRIEBY.

After what has been so eloquently and fittingly said I have very great reluctance to appear before you to speak of Brother Powell. I have on several occasions spoken of him, and it is only because I am unwilling that the office and the office workers should not in some way be recognized that I consent to say a few words to-day.

What I have to say relates not so much to his public life as to our office relations with him. It has been my sad duty to go to the graves or speak at these meetings in reference to the death of all the officers associated with me when I came into this work; Lewis Tappan, George Whipple, S.S. Jocelyn, G.D. Pike--all of these I have followed to the grave. There is this one difference between Brother Powell's death and that of the others in our memory--all the others had a long, wasting sickness; we remember the darkened room, the pale face, the parched lips, the night vigils. But we have no such thought in regard to Brother Powell's death. The morning after the holiday of Christmas I came to the office not to hear the statement that Brother Powell was very sick, but the astounding announcement "Brother Powell is dead." This was indeed terrible; but the memory of Brother Powell has not been darkened with the thought of sickness, but remains with us just as he was in health and vigor. We still think of the quick step with which he came into the office, the hearty cheer with which he greeted us, the pleasant face that shone not only at the door, but through the whole day. He was a busy worker, as has been said, but ever and always the same bright face, the same cheerful heart, the same warm love, the same readiness to help bear everybody's load, went through the long day. If you have ever spent a day in the mountains, with its breezy temperature, and yet with the sun filling the whole blue heavens and shining on all things--water, mountain, valley, tree and grass--if that day has left its memory of brightness and sweetness in your heart, such is the memory left on us in the office by Brother Powell.