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and true manhood, all struggling for the prominence, in the last earthly operations of this giant mind, "That has gone from this strange world of ours; no more to gather its thorns with its flowers." Oh, how good he was! Oh, how great he is!
"In Christ may he rest from sorrow and sin;
Happy where earths conflicts enter not in."
But I need not extol him here to-day. My eulogy will be too poor, I think, compared with what all the world has said, is saying, and will repeat, of Charles Sumner, through all lime, and my eloquent friend and colleague, Mr. Turner, who has just preceeded me, has said enough for the memorial occasion. But allow me to give you a synopsis of his Times[1] history, which truly says Charles Sumner was early educated in the most advanced ideas of the thinkers of the old Whig party, who were opposed to slavery in every form, from a deep conviction of its repugnance to Christianity and humanity. In this school of thought Charles Sumner was educated, and when the war with Mexico threatened, and it was proposed to annex Texas as a slave State, he made his entry into political life with a splendid oration, at Boston, on "The True Grandeur of Nations," in which he declared war and slavery to be remnants of a barbarous age, and unworthy of Christian nations. The oration attracted universal attention, and provoked endless controversy. It was prononnced by Richard Cobden "the most noble contribution made by any modern writer to the cause of peace." This was a brilliant opening for a comparatively young lawyer, not hitherto known outside his own State; but when we turn back and see the years of severe prepartion which had preceded it, we find that it was not the effort of sudden inspiration, but one of the matured results of a life spent in the highest cultivation of great intellectual gifts.
- ↑ New York Times
