A PASTOR AND FRIEND.

When the Rev. Dr. Dickinson, first President of Princeton College, was on his death-bed, the rector of the Episcopal church in the village (they were in Elizabethtown) was also dying. The President was first released, and when the rector was told that his friend and neighbor had gone, he exclaimed, "O that I had hold of his skirts."

This was the thought of Elisha when the other prophet went up.

It was my first desire when I heard that my old friend Dr. Brinsmade, of Newark, had been suddenly translated. Eighty years old: full of years, full of grace, with his arms full of sheaves, rejoicing in the Lord: he was not, for God took him.

What a tide of emotion rushed in as I remembered the years of our daily companionship, while he was pastor and I led the Sabbath-school. The friendship was warm, tender and holy; as free from dross as human friendship can be; cemented by the common love we had for Christ, His Church, and especially the lambs of His flock. For them we labored hand in hand, and great was our joy and reward.

You will be interested in some of the recollections I have of this dear good man. Perhaps you will be profited as well as interested. At any rate, the hour I spend in writing of him will be "privileged beyond the common walks of life, quite in the verge of heaven." For as I sit in my silent study, in the still night, and the fire burns low, and the city itself is asleep around me, I call up the memories of my departed friend, and even now, this minute, it seems as though he might step in as he was wont to every day what time he was in the flesh, and had not yet ascended to his Father and my Father.

And that reminds me of one interview in the study: to tell of it will be the shortest way to discover the calm, equable, trustful nature of the man.

Facts had come to my knowledge, very painful, and per

sonally to him distressing, which he ought to know, and which it became my duty to impart to him. I evaded and avoided the unpleasant task, until a sense of duty overcame: and when he came to my study in the evening, I went at it with protracted circumlocution, and after a tedious introduction managed at last to lay the skeleton at his feet. Then I paused, expecting to hear some pious ejaculation like a prayer for help: but, to my relief and surprise, he simply said:

“Well, I have long since made up my mind not to expend emotion on what cannot be helped."

That sentence has been like a proverb with me ever since. It is only a paraphrase of the adage, “What can't be cured, must be endured." But it has a little more philosophy in it, and means "don't fret: there are two things never to be worried about things that can be helped, and things that can't be helped. If you can cure them, do so and don't fret: if you can't cure them, fretting only makes matters worse." This is philosophy, Grace comes in and says: Your heavenly Father careth for these things: his will is wise and kind: let not your heart be troubled."

66

We never made allusion to the matter again. It was as though the skeleton were buried in the darkness of that night, and its burial-place were not known.

Eighty years! Fourscore years of usefulnesss, devotion, holy living and active Christian benevolence. For, like his Master, he went about doing good. His power in the ministry was in pastoral work. It is not probable that any church ever had a pastor more nearly perfect than he. He was a good, not a great preacher, except as goodness is often the greatest greatness. Warm, earnest, drenched with Scripture, and rich Christian experience, his sermons were poured forth from a heart full of tenderness and love, so that every hearer knew the preacher yearned to do him good.

Himself a disciple in the school of suffering, taught by the Man of Sorrows, he was a son of consolation to them who mourned. In every household of his charge he ministered in affliction, and his people, especially the children of his people, died in his arms. Just here I could speak of scenes that

he and I will talk over together, when we and ours are sitting on the banks of the river that flows from the throne of the Lamb! Hallowed memories! Tears thirty years ago now flowing again, while his are all wiped away by the hand of Infinite Love!

It is not weakness to weep when these memories come, and little fingers of the long-ago-lost fondly play with our heart-strings in the night watches. Jesus wept. And he wept by the grave of one he loved. I would be like my Lord, and if I may not resemble him in aught else, let them say of me, as they said of Jesus, "Behold, how he loved him."

Children would stop in their play to take his hand as he passed along the street. And there is nothing in the description of the village pastor of Goldsmith more beautiful than was daily revealed in the walk and conversation of this good shepherd. He was able to give money to those who had need of it, for his own habits were exceedingly simple, almost severe, and his income ample. It was freely spent upon the poor in his own flock, and in the ends of the world. The father of many orphans, he was as the Lord is to them whom father and mother had left behind when going home to heaven.

So have I seen a peaceful meadow stream winding its way among green fields, and trees planted by the water-course; verdure and flower and fruit revealing its life-giving power. It made no noise. It was often hid from sight by the wealth of overhanging branches: but it was a river of water of life to the valley it blessed. Like unto such a stream is the life of my departed friend. This day the garden of the Lord is glad for him: his whole course of 80 years may be traced by the fruit and flower and joy which rose into being along his path. He did not strive nor cry, his voice was not heard in the streets. Others were more gifted with golden speech, and had wider fame among men. But no minister of our day has been an angel of mercy to more hearts: none is wept by more whom he comforted: none has been welcomed by a goodlier company of saints whom he saved, and of them whose angels do always behold the face of my Father,

How better to be good than to be great! How much greater than greatness goodness is!

A DREAM OF THE YEAR.

"I saw a vision in my sleep,

That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of Time!"

-T. Campbell.

We have more dreams awake than when we sleep. A large part of every one's life is passed amid "the stuff that dreams are made of." At times we hardly know whether we have been asleep or not, a vision of past and future appears— and then vanishes away.

It was in one of those moods between waking and sleeping, before rising on the morning of the first day of the year, that this vision passed before me, with all the vividness of the sun, and left its impress so that I can tell you what I saw and heard.

I was walking on the bank of a deep, broad, silent river, flowing onward toward the sea. The stream was coVered with vessels of various names and rig; all going with the current; making progress, some more, some less, but all getting on. Some of these ships were so near me that I could see the men on board, and with a little care I could discover the work that each was set to do, from the master to the cabin boy. There was enough for all, and each vessel kept on its own course, when every man did his own work, faithfully and well. There was some bad steering and slovenly handling the sails, and here and there a captain was tipsy and things were out of sorts, and one ship would run into another or get aground; and I saw that the neglect of any one to do his duty, made mischief that brought trouble to all on board.

Before me in the path stood a man whose white hair and

wrinkles told me of his great age, and even if he had not carried a scythe over his shoulder, I would easily have known him as Father Time. He said to me in firm and manly tones:

'Whither goest thou ?"

"With the current," I replied; "all things seem tending to the sea: some go by water, some by land, and I suppose we are all going the same way."

"Turn," he said, "and go back with me, on the path thou hast travelled."

We reversed our steps, and he spoke to me of the path of human life: it is often called a journey, a pilgrimage: but it should rather be spoken of as a place, a house, a field, a battle, a service; he said it was wrong to think of life as a sort of space or distance between two goals: a race to be run and then over: a voyage to be made and then the port to be enjoyed and as we walked side by side he discoursed to me of the duties of life, of the works that each man has to do, and neglecting which, he makes a failure. We came, in our walk, upon wrecks of vessels stranded and rotten on the shore: by the side of the pathway, and now and then in the very road itself, were the remnants of broken engines, and the scattered members of beautiful machinery and the bones of human beings lying in the grass by the wayside. Puzzled with the sight of these things, not one of which I had noticed when pursuing my journey alone and with the current of the stream, I looked up with wonder to my patriarchal guide and asked:

66

'What are these wrecks that strew the road ?"

“LOST OPPORTUNITIES," were the only words that fell from his lips, but they fell as from out of the sky, so far off and so solemn did they sound in my ear. I was silent, awestruck, and anxious, for a faint suspicion came to my mind that this was in part my work, and these ruins were memorials of my neglect, if nothing worse. And I repeated his words in a tone of respectful inquiry:

Lost opportunities? Whose and what, tell me, my counsellor and friend,"