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