Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1870-07-28
The Variety OF Death.

A fine idea, expressed in beautiful Ian.
guage, is in the opening phrases of Rev.
Hugh Thompson,s euiogy of the late
Bishop Kempcr, delivered at the Episco-
pal Convention Of Milwaukee. The
speaker said:
AS no two lives have ever been alike
on earth, 30 no two deaths have ever
been. There is vast variety in mems
lying as IN their living.
There are deaths that, apart from all
regrets and SORROWS. impress us with a
painful sense of discord. They come
before the work is done. The story is
broken off The drama has no close
The music Jars into sudden discord. and
ends. We stand about the grave, and
from the earthly side there is a blank
sense of completeness. We are cheated
by promise that was never filed. There
is another confusion among the many
Commissions of this lower world, another
discomfort with its apparent lack of pur-
pose.
Such are always the deaths of chill
dren and the very yonng. With no
vision of another world, where the great
God of all worlds has work and uses,
these deaths seem utterly unreasonable.
And we may add to these the deaths
in opening manhood, just when the hand
has learned its cunning, and the brain
has gained its strength, when TO the
young man, with promise of noble results,
and high in courage, hope aud princi-
pie, death comes and ends the story be-
fore the first page is written, takes the
tools away and suspends the labor before
the first blow is struck.
And besides these, the deaths that
come in the middle life, when tied to
family and friends, and social duties, the
center of a thousand interests, with his
work all about him unfinished, work
he is doing well by all mems judgment,
work which he thinks none but he can
do so well, or it may be done at all, death
summons q man in the midst of his high
est uses and most splendid successes. and
all is broken off in the midst, and left
fragmentary and chaotic. To the deep.
est sense of loss there is added this fur.
Their strain upon the intellect. to bear a
loss that, from this tide, seems needless
and irrational.
These deaths may come suddenly, by
slow decay or by the accident, as we call
it, of moment, but they are none the
less to our reason shock, and contra.
diction to our sense of fitness. We call
them untimely Deaths" unreasonable
in doing SO, but that we are taught by
faith, and not by sight.
Again there are deaths that come up
on us with the sense of completed
harmony; deaths that ends lives as sun.
set ends the day; deaths when the work
is done. when the story is all told, when
the long full days travel is flushed
Youth prepared for the work in a faith
full prenlicehood; manhood did the work
like a master. Patiently as the years
passed, the appointed duty fulfilled, the
prescribed burden born. And now, at
last, all finished, death comes to sum.
mon the laborer 10 his rest.
They are deaths to thank God for
these deaths that end long and fruitful
life with n perfect close. They come
with the calmness of summer sunsets,
that end the day, with the dreamy re.
greet of the Indian summer that ends
the year. They seem TO belong to the
diviner harmonies of the other world,
to be yisitations of Gods eternal order
here among the uncertainties and confu-
sions If fipnan