DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 195 



i 



tunity, from "the forlorn and shipwrecked brother/ 7 who had 

 already failed in the voyage of life, to the adventurous young 

 mariner who sought his counsel and guidance for the successful 

 launching of his ship from its ways. Many are the young men, 

 who, in all parts of the land, could rise up to-day and call him 

 blessed, for the. blessing he brought to them by the kind word 

 spoken and the kind deed done, each in its season. 



Unselfishness was a fundamental trait in the character of Pro- 

 fessor Henry, and he made the same trait a fundamental one in 

 his conception of the philosopher's high calling. The work of sci- 

 entific inquiry was with him a labor of love, not simply because he 

 loved the labor, but because he hoped by it to advance the cause 

 of truth and promote the welfare of man. He never dreamed of 

 profiting by any discovery he made. He would not even have his 

 salary increased, so tenaciously did he hold to the Christ-like privi- 

 lege of living among men "as one that serveth." This was a 

 crown which he would let no man take from him. To the Govern- 

 ment he freely gave, in many spheres of public usefulness, all the 

 time he could spare from his official duties. And it was in one of 

 these subsidiary public labors, as chairman of the Light-House 

 Board, that he contracted, as he believed, the disease which carried 

 him to the grave. 



A sense of rectitude presided over all his thoughts and acts. 

 He had so trained his mind to right thinking, and his will to right 

 feeling and right doing, that this absolute rectitude became a part 

 of his intellectual as well as moral nature. Hence in his methods 

 of philosophizing he was incapable of sophistical reasoning. He 

 sat at the feet of nature with as much of candor as of humility, 

 never importing into his observations the pride of opinion, and 

 never yielding to the seductions of an overweening fancy. He 

 was sober in his judgments. He made no hasty generalizations. 

 His mind seemed to turn on " the poles of truth." 

 ' I could not dwell with enough of emphasis on this v crowning 

 grace of our beloved friend if I should seek to do full justice to 

 my conception of the completeness it gave to his beautiful character. 

 But happily for me I need dwell upon it with only the less of 

 emphasis because it was the quality which, to use a French idiom, 



