ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY. 355 



in one sermon or in two that he taught his lessons. The undergrad- 

 uates who heard him month after mouth knew that he had a plan of 

 life. They knew what that plan was. They knew that it was not 

 a plan for ten years or for seventy ; it was the plan for the life of 

 an immortal. It was not a plan for a lonely life, but for a life all 

 wrought in with the life of the universe. It was the plan of a man 

 who says " Our Father " when he prays, who knows what it is to be 

 a son of God, who is engaged in his Father's affairs, who goes and 

 comes on his Father's errands, creates as God creates, and enters 

 into his Father's joys. 



As has been intimated, Dr. Peabody was an omnivorous reader, 

 and he was what the world now calls an all-round reader. I doubt 

 if he ever read anything merely because other people read it, or from 

 that vague and misleading notion that one must keep up with the 

 times. He was never afraid of being behind the times. AVhen he 

 assumed the charge of the North American, he was very eager that 

 it should not be guilty of mutual admiration, — an offence which it 

 had been fairly accused of. When he gave up that journal, after 

 five or six years' service, I said to him that he had given it up when 

 he had " just begun to fight," when he was most fit for the business. 

 " On the other hand," he said, " by the time a man has been an 

 editor five years he should leave the helm. For by that time he has 

 a circle of friends working with him, to whom he is under obliga- 

 tions. It becomes inevitable that he and his journal will want to 

 be good to them, and their work will be spoken of as more impor- 

 tant and permanent than it really is." 



He was a counsellor and director in a hundred philanthropic trustSo 

 Charity, education, peace, temperance, — whatever goes to happy homes 

 and manly manhood, — for every movement or organization which in- 

 volved these, he came to be regarded as of course an adviser and leader. 

 Men of wealth were glad to take his counsel as to their use of it ; 

 and how glad he was when he could bring together here, face to 

 face perhaps, the youngster who came eager for what Harvard could 

 give, and the Maecenas as glad that the boy should drink at her 

 fountain. 



Such activities brought him in touch with active men in all relisious 

 communions. " The doing the things which the Lord said," — the 

 Christian spirit in which such men worked together, — made men 

 prize him for what he was. People who are fond of method, and of 

 stating in written language the results of the great movements of 

 society, are always asking that the Christian Church shall devise some 



