ning to live, and feels so the more profoundly, the farther he advances in 

 wisdom and goodness. The more resplendently he reflects the Divine image, 

 the more transcendently glorious, beyond his present attainment, seems to 

 him the supreme Archetype of goodness. The deeper his search into the 

 works and providence of God, the more vast is the realm of the unexplored ; 

 for each new province that becomes known to him abuts on every side upon 

 provinces unknown or but dimly seen. Curiosity, longing, yearning, craving 

 for more of love and of goodness, for more of truth and of light, grows by 

 what it feeds on, and is never more intense and active than almost or quite 

 on the brink of the grave, sometimes in the very last moments making 

 the hope of immortality a prophetic vision of a broader, higher scope for the 

 cognitive and active powers ; while if there be a brief suspension as the 

 body lingers and languishes under the death-shadow, it is no longer or more 

 entire than may have intervened in the infirmities or illnesses of earlier 

 days. 



The broken column was, you know, the old heathen symbol of a life cut 

 down on its midway career. If there be a reality in death, the symbol is still 

 more appropriate to the lengthened earthly life that has been consecrated to 

 truth and duty. But, blessed be God, the column is not broken. What 

 seems the line of fracture is but the jagged lower outline of a cloud which 

 the keen vision of faith can pierce, and trace the column as it rises and rises, 

 stage upon stage, into the upper heavens among the pillars on which rests 

 the throne of the Eternal. Oh ! never seems death so utterly unreal as when 

 it hides from mortal sight the greatly good, the excellently great. I am sure 

 that to them, so far as they retain self-consciousness under the death-shadow, 

 it is but a fleeting shadow ; and if for a little while it rests densely on sense 

 and soul, how transcendently glorious the moment when it is lifted from 

 them, and they awake in the everlasting light ! 



Such are the thoughts which must have filled many minds and hearts, as 

 we looked on that serenely beautiful countenance over which yesterday we 

 here offered our prayers and thanksgivings. 



Professor Peirce, passing from us in the fiftieth year of his official connec- 

 tion with our University, had a longer term of service than any member of 

 the academic corps from the foundation of the College, with the one excep- 

 tion of the venerable Tutor Flynt. There was no faint prophecy of his emi- 

 nence in the families from which he sprang. His father had graduated with 

 the first honors of his class, and in his latter years was well known here as 

 of no less rich endowments of mind than surpassing moral worth. His 



44 



