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coming earthquake was in the deeps below our national structure. At last the fatal hour struck. The repressed forces upheaved and chaos came again, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The sun became as blackness and the moon as blood, and the stars fell from heaven and the old world passed away. The long silence of the heavens broken, the Majesty of Darkness came forth from his secret chambers for judgment: a fiery stream went forth before him and burning plagues were at his feet.' The earth saw and trembled, and the perpetual hills did bow.' Then were the thrones cast down and the books were opened. In the awful arbitrament of wrath and ruin, The Highest gave his voice, and the dark spirit that had brooded over the land so long was cast out and driven into the outer dark, and the shackles fell from millions of hands. The storm passed, the bow of peace was seen in the broken clouds, and the sunlight broke in on a land where the hands and words of men were free." What was it to have lived these years, a lone representative of thought and feeling that was challenged at every street corner, in the parlor, and on the rostrum, and nowhere more sharply than at the church-door! With the cries of the slave, the sound of arms, the varying fortunes of the tremendous conflict in his ears, his life, his dwelling, his family in peril, the oncoming cataract stealing his vision, with unfaltering faith, calm courage, unruffled temper, the fearless and none the less loving arraignment of evil, he passed the long days and the longer nights until the end came.

But with the destruction of the forces of slavery and the expansion and emancipation of thought there came not unalloyed delight. Movements, which did not wholly meet the approval of one who had dreamed of a different future, distressed him. Zeal, without knowledge as he thought, worried him. It was left to others to build upon the foundations which he had firmly placed.

He lived to see the sole church which he had championed represented by twelve organizations in the city of his adoption, and fourscore churches in the commonwealth. This progress and advance came not with even pace. Rapid at first, its course was checked, and men learned that proclamations may free slaves in a day, but time only, and a very long time, can make thought free. It was a rich commonwealth that received his life labor. Its untold resources its own citizens have little conception of, and the vast world outside knows nothing of. Here and there a glimpse has been caught of its future possibilities; and as the years go by, the day may not be far distant, suddenly there shall roll away the

barrier to its magnificent future, and then will be discovered also the hidden forces which, working wellnigh silently during the past, will leap forth with unsurpassed might, forces shaped and controlled by the thought, the faith, the life, of the founder of our order in our State.

What these forces were it would be well to designate. They have been hinted at in the story of his career. They deserve distinct statement and enumeration.

His Mind. As Dr. Post lay in his coffin, some for the first time beheld the shape of the head and the lines of the countenance which were the worthy abode of his master intellect. Always he had been a striking personage among his fellows. But perhaps the benignity of his face had drawn away attention from its strength. There was a grouping of graces in his mind. He had the gifts of a poet, a philosopher, an historian, and a seer. Formal poetry he did not write, but rarely did he preach upon a lofty theme without breathing into it the truest poetry. His was the vocabulary of a poet who fills every word with beauty, and who can call into being words better than any current terms to express thoughts begotten in his own soul. The flight of his imagination was the wonder and admiration of those who heard him on great occasions,-flights into regions so lofty as to strike terror into the hearts of all who had not learned that no height made him lose poise. His face, as he stood before an audience, disclosed the soul of the poet. His fancy found play in the lighter efforts of his mind, in the abandon of conversation sparkling with wit and humor.

History was his favorite pursuit. The men of the past lived in his thinking, and the deeds of bygone ages were as vivid as present transactions. The rare faculty of a correct perspective was his, the ability to group events also. The "trend of affairs," as he often expressed it, was the constant object of his search. It seems at times a mistake which made a mind fitted for such pursuits so full of the busy affairs of life, that the world will never see from his pen the judgment that he had formed of the past: but we console ourselves with the thought, that to make history is greater than to write history; that to have such a mind working out life-thoughts in the most sensitive community, during the hours of the greatest transformation of our nation's life, was an amazing provision of Providence.

And he was a philosopher. The deep things of God, the farthest reaches of the human mind, engaged his thought. He was of the Lord's chosen ones bidden by the Master to "launch out into the

deep." In his later years the richness of his conversation upon vast themes was only surpassed by its breadth and vigor. Others might be content with the beauty of the ocean of truth: he sounded its deeps to discover the hidden treasures. Systems he did not formulate, doctrines he cared little to develop; but the thoughts that underlie systems, the truths that stand behind doctrines, were his delight. For he was a seer. The logical processes that other minds must employ he overleaped. The trodden paths that others walked in he had left behind. The mountain top, whence could be seen at a glance the greatest truths, was the outlook he had gained. Of him it could be said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Other men in his day may have surpassed him in the vastness of their attainments, in the patience of their research, in accuracy of detail, but few have had his intimate, direct, loving acquaintance with truth. It is not surprising that such a mind welcomed with eagerness any new manifestation of truth, abhorred all restraints on those who were searching for the verities, demanded for himself and for others liberty of thought. Oldness, newness, were nothing; trueness, to him, was everything.

His Soul.-Dr. Post was supremely honest of soul. Where other men could lightly give assent to a creed and thus join a church and enter the ministry, he stood back appalled. The vast truths of the confession and the catechism must be his before he could declare them true. I shall never forget the shudder with which he recalled an attempt to commit a mass meeting of one of our large societies against a dogma at the time regarded unorthodox. "Who of those who voted for or against the motion," said he, "knew the teaching of the Scriptures upon the question? What if those who are voting against heresy, as they thought, were voting against the Bible?"

"Dr. Post, as usual, voting on both sides of the question," said a member of the Missouri Association, little appreciating the fact that Dr. Post could not shut his eyes to the truth which is nearly always found upon both sides of questions which come before Christian men for discussion. The church which he founded has a creed, the work of the hand of its founder, twenty-five years in advance of the creeds of its day; but no man, woman, or child found this creed, or any creed, standing across the portal of his church. It distressed him to learn that a new convert, who had no instruction or little thought upon the truths that it contained, desired to stand up before God and men and de

clare his belief in its different articles. It was all that he dared ask of any that they should be received after his saying to the congregation, "These persons have, on previous personal examination, exhibited satisfactory conformity with the following statement of the great truth of Christianity exhibited in the confession of faith of this church." The only vows asked were those of consecration and service. In more than one direction looked this pregnant passage from the dedication sermon which Dr. Post preached at the opening of his church in 1852: "Here we inaugurate a gospel free in vindicating the eternal rights of the human soul to God's truth and its private judgment thereon. May the gospel here never be bound! Chain up, if you will, the senate chamber, the court-house, the forum, but may the gospel never come forth in this place wearing manacles! Wretched the preacher, wretched the people, that will suffer chains on it. Eternal chains await them both."

His was a Christ-loving soul. He loved, with all the intensity of his being, the Christ. His soul was knit with the soul of our Lord. To Him he referred all questionings and doubts. It mattered little what theories were held upon this or that fact of God's Word or government. Jesus was to him "the way, the truth, and the life." Acquainted with all the planets and knowing their motions, he learned them all by the study of the central Sun. In the last published utterances of Dr. Post I find these words: "The present need of the Christian world is a new resurrection of our Lord from the dead, another mighty angel to roll away the stone from the sepulchre. We need a new walk with the risen Christ to Emmaus, and to feel our hearts burn within us as He opens to us the Scriptures. We need another Pentecostal effusion of the Holy Spirit guiding the church with the consciousness of Him as a living personal presence. There needs a new enthronement and coronation of Him, another Apocalypse and unveiling of Him as King of kings and Lord of lords."

His Heart. - Dr. Post, commanding as was his intellect, lofty as was his soul, to those who knew him best owed to a loving heart the secret of his power. His was not the affection of a passionate nature loud in its expression, nor of a jealous disposition imperious in its demands, nor of an exclusive cast with its few favorites. He had friends everywhere and of all classes and conditions, of those who loved him, not merely because he was great and good, but because he loved them. Strong men, tender women, and little children bewailed their loss when it was said that he was

dead. "St. Louis had three saints, now there are but two," said a prominent banker on the day of his funeral. "Was not that the apostle John?" said a little girl who, after hearing of the revelator and his last words, "Little children, love one another,” felt for the first time the hand of the aged pastor-emeritus on her head.

Three generations mourned a dear friend, the few equal in age to himself, who with him had passed through the valley of the shadows of a great national conflict; the many into whose life had been wrought the instructions which he had given them in their youth; the boys and girls who, when the twentieth century shall have dawned, will recall the face they were taught to revere and learned to love. How such a heart can suffer when those whom he loves forsake, neglect, try to injure him! And the heart of the man who deserves no foes, but none the less has the bitterest of enemies, can by the help of God keep to itself its agony and quench revenge, hatred, and malice. It was from others than the sufferer that men learned of the wounds which Dr. Post received.

His great soul was like an ivy rather than the oak. It never seemed to any one who came near him that he demanded aught of homage, or even respect. He loved because he needed to love, and was not ashamed to disclose this need. He carried the griefs of a thousand hearts. Sickness in a home summoned him, and death there made his presence a necessity. The cemetery, at the opening of which he delivered perhaps the master oration of his life, is now the densely populated abode of hundreds who were carried thither by his loving hands.

Dr. Post was fortunate in the hour of his death. He was not called to live until his powers had decayed, and those who had known him in his greatness must needs remark his decline: in full possession of his mind, interested in all that was transpiring in the world of thought about him, his beloved church transplanted from the scene of inevitable defeat to that of assured success, he fell asleep. There is a marvelous opportuneness in the hour of such a departure. Men are still living who appreciate and delight in the work of the generation to which he belonged. The judgment which approves only the work of the present generation has not become universal.

Judged by the standards that are now forming, the standards by which men are now being measured, Dr. Post's life would be regarded less than that of many men his inferior in mind, heart,