SERMON. 1 



BY THE REV. C. A. BARTOL, D.D. 



" He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names." Ps. cxlvii..4. 



WHILE we resume in various ways, how Nature, one after another, resumes 

 us ! Several funerals have lately called my attention : first, that of the 

 Norse minstrel, at seventy still a child, a rare nature in the volume of being, 

 as grammarians say of certain expressions in the Bible that they are spoken 

 but once ; next, of a four-months' babe, ripening and falling from the tree of 

 life like those blossoms that bring forth fruit on the boughs, and bearing the 

 honored name of that great lawyer and Christian patriot Charles Greeley 

 Loring, dying in the same room, on the same day and almost the same hour 

 of the calendar, thirteen years after his grandfather, as though he had by 

 him been called ; lastly, that of the astronomer and mathematician whose 

 demise will produce a sensation in scientific circles throughout the world, as 

 all the pines in the wood resound when some monarch of the forest falls. 

 Death is called in the book of Job " disorderly," because its order is too 

 deep for us to trace. But Nature is impartial, and lays no stress on the 

 decease of king, president, or pope. She loves the babe as much as she 

 does them. Goethe represents her as saying of Shakspeare, " He is a tid-bit ; 

 I will take him last," his literary fame being co-eval with the scriptures of 

 Judasa or Greece ; but by the wavering leaf of infancy, or crashing oak that 

 may figure transcendent genius or virtue, Nature is alike unmoved. The 

 storm that rattled the windows of the houses at Cromwell's departure, 

 and the veil rent and darkened land when Jesus expired, were only seized 

 upon by friends as signifying the importance of these men," great in different 

 spheres. We emphasize, but Nature writes nothing in italics : she holds on 

 her even way. The termination of the humblest career tears some heart- 

 string ; and, when some highly honored personage disappears, we try with 

 our words to blow the trumpet of his fame ; but as we leave the loud plat- 

 form or solemn desk, and come out into the air, the open sky with its vast 



1 Preached in the West Church, Boston, Sunday morning, Oct. 17. 



