God, for the bereaved of this day, the strength and comfort of His grace, will be the commendation of our darlings to the favor of His love. And, the deep penitence, which such a death should waken in our hearts, so sudden, so startling, so appalling, will bring us to the Cross, where none can perish, through the Lamb, Who died for all. To Whom, one with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, three Persons, and one only God, shall ever be ascribed, the glory and the praise. the Prayer which follows, before the two final Prayers of Morning and Evening Service. We shall do well to humble ourselves, under the chastening hand of Almighty God; and to beseech Him, for His dear Son's sake, to pardon our manifold transgressions, and turn away His anger from us, lest we perish. If prosperity have hardened the national heart; if we have been tempted to forget God our Saviour; in whatever way we have offended Him, who holds the nations in His hands, this signal Providence should be improved by us, in that humility of spirit, and with that consecration of heart and life, which become us, as ransomed sinners, and with which, alone, we can come acceptably before Him, through the propitiation of the Cross. Upon our hearts, thus softened and subdued, He will send down the blessings, and the comforts of His grace, and restore to us, His pardoning and preserving love. Commending the bereaved household, of our late venerable Chief Magistrate, the honoured successor to him, in the highest trust which men bestow, his associates, in the several departments of the government, and the whole appalled and mourning nation, to your faithful prayers, and to the mercy and favour of God, I am, affectionately, and faithfully, your brother and servant in Christ, GEORGE W. DOANE, RIVERSIDE, July 19, 1850 PRAYER. Bishop of New Jersey. O Merciful God, and Heavenly Father, who hast taught us, in Thy holy Word, that Thou dost not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men; Look with pity, we beseech Thee, upon the sorrows of Thy servants. In Thy wisdom, thou hast seen fit to visit us with trouble, and to bring distress upon us. Remember us, O Lord, in mercy; sanctify Thy fatherly correction to us; endue our souls with patience under our affliction, and with resignation to Thy blessed will; comfort us with a sense of Thy goodness; lift up Thy countenance upon us, and give us peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. III. DANIEL WEBSTER'S REAL GLORY. * A SERMON ON THE DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. JEREMIAH IX. 23, 24.-Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this; that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, saith the Lord. THE meaning of God's word is never so well devel oped, as when His Providence is its interpreter. When, from some solemn text He preaches in some awful judg ment—at once, its exposition and its application-the nations shrink and quail: like startled reapers, when, without a cloud in heaven, the thunder bursts, at noon; and leaps, from crag, to crag, till Alps or Andes seem to topple, to their fall. I have meditated much, for many years, upon this text of Jeremiah; and have heard fre quent sermons from it: but I never felt its fulness until now; and it never preached to me, as in the death of Daniel Webster. "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him. *At the request of the students of Burlington College, November, A. D. 1852. that glorieth glory in this; that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord." In Daniel Webster, all the stimulants to human glory, of which the Prophet warns us, were singularly blended. He was a rich man; he was a wise man; he was a mighty man. In which of them, had he the slightest ground for glorying? And in which of them, was his reliance at the moment when he left them all? I do not mean that Daniel Webster ever was, or ever could have been, what men call rich. He had no sense of money, but its use. He was born and reared in honourable poverty. His youth was dignified by diligence. His early manhood struggled into confidence and comfort. But long before mid-life, he had, in his distinction at the bar, what Dr. Johnson called "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." It is not probable that any American lawyer has ever commanded a larger income. It was greater, doubtless, in some years than the income of the Presi dent. A single fee has been fifteen thousand dollars. And had he sought his own, and bound himself to his profession, there is no limit to be set to its vast earnings. But his country claimed him for her councils, and he gave himself to her unstinted service. And if the grateful people, among whom his children were all cradled, supplied in some degree to him, the utter sacrifice of personal regards which his absorption in the national interests demanded, it was their willing tribute to the devotion and ability, which wealth could not have bought. And with his constant access, to whatever is most genial and attractive, in the social intercourse of life, and with his keen perception of the beautiful in nature and in art, and chiefly in the unrestrained enjoy. ment of his home at Marshfield, "The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, And all that echoes to the song of even, All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, he was, in rich. every truest sense and for all actual uses, That he was a wise man, every tongue admits. In all the ranges of professional distinction, as a lawyer, and especially, in that which he himself almost cre ated, constitutional law; in all the vast variety of subjects, with which a practice of such range must make him conversant, in science, in the arts, in history, in commerce, in navigation, in finance, in all the phases of philosophy, and most of all in man; in widest, loftiest, noblest, most controlling statesmanship; and, though the pastime only of his hours of recreation, in most suc cessful agriculture, scientific that it might be practical, and practical because truly scientific, he had attained a wisdom unsurpassed. The country leaned upon him: and his presence in our councils gave confidence to Europe, and the world. I was in England not long after him: and everywhere he was the theme of the profoundest admiration. Scarcely their own Wellington equalled, in English minds, the measure of our Webster. And was he not a mighty man? Was he not our mighty man? When Washington and Hamilton have been passed by, was he not our mightiest man? Who else could draw such thousands? Who else could wield them so? Who else, like him, "the applause of listening Senates" could "command?" His maiden speech in Congress, before he was a Senator, won from so great a man as Chief Justice Marshall, the prophetic judgment, that he "would become one of the very first statesmen in America; and perhaps the very first." And he went on from that, the eloquent orator that was always equal to the greatest occasion; holding the highest place before the highest courts; and honoured by his distinguished Southern contemporary Mr. Lowndes, by the declaration, that for parliamentary power, "the North had not his equal, nor the South his superior!" On Plymouth Rock, at the foot of Bunker Hill, within the walls of Faneuil Hall, he lifted up a voice which filled the land, which all the languages of Europe echo back, which will forever live among the household words of men, while Shakspeare's tongue and Milton's shall be spoken. In the Dartmouth College case, in which the tears of the Chief Justice mingled with those of the audience, in the great question of the steamboat monopoly by the State of New York, and in the matter of the will of Stephen Girard, he reached the very highest summit of forensic reputation. His conflict with Colonel Hayne in the Senate of the United States, his admirable discussion of all the great financial questions of the times, and his nullifying of nullification, are un |