"
Courage to meet any emergency, firmness to resist temptation when
presented in its most alluring form, was blended with that genuine
kindness of manner, that deference towards the weak and defenceless,
which renders its fortunate possessor not only esteemed, but beloved.
Yet with so much that was admirable in mind and heart, of him it might
be said, as it was of one of old, "One thing thou lackest." Strange,
that the subject of the greatest importance should be, too often, the
one most seldom dwelt on, too frequently thrust aside, until, in the
season of affliction and the hour of death, its terrible magnitude is
first realized--realized, perhaps, forever too late. Regular in his
attendance on all the ordinances of worship, his heart had remained
unaffected; but this indifference was owing, it may be, in a measure, to
the discourses to which he was in the habit of listening from Sabbath to
Sabbath,--discourses which, while they portrayed in fairest colors the
beauty of a moral life, seemed to forget the natural depravity of the
human heart, and the necessity of the mind being fully renewed, in order
that it might carry those principles into effect.
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