Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1870-07-13
naiIv Aenntbrf Sonrnal.
THE VARIETY OT DEATH.

A fine idea. expressed in fine language,
is in the opening phrases OF Rev. hugh
Thompsons euIogy of the late Bishop
Kemper, delivered at the Episcopal Com
yention of Milwaukee. The speaker SAID ::
AS no two lives have ever been alike
on earth, so no two deaths haveever been.
There is vast variety in mems dying as
in their living. -
There are deaths, that apart from all
regrets and sorrows, impress us with
nainful sense of discard. They come be-
fore the work is DONE The story is bro
ken off. The drama has no close. The
The music Jars into sudden discord, ana
ends. We stand about the grave, and
from the earthly side there Is a blank sense
of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. We are cheated by a
promise that was never filed. There Is
another confusion amid the many confu-
sions of this lower world, another discon-
tent with its apparent lack of purpose.
"Sueh are always the deaths of children
and the very young. With no vision OF
another world, where the great God of al
worlds has works 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 and principle, death
comes and ends the story before the first
page is written takes the tools away and
suspends the labor before the first blow Is
struck.
"And besides these, the death that
comes in middle life, when tied to family
and friends, and social duties, the centre
of thousand interests. with his work all
about him unfinished, work he is doing
well by all mems judgment. work which
we think none but he can do so well, or 1t
may be do at all, death summons a man
in the midst of his highest uses and most
splendid successes, and Is broken on IN
the midst, and left fragmentary and chaot-
ic. To the deepest sense OF loss there is
added this further strain upon the intellect,
to bear a loss that, from this SIDE, 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 a shock, and a contradiction
to our sense of fitness. We call them
untimely Deaths unreasonable in dong
so, but that we are taught by faith, ana moi
by sight.
Again, there are tilest N'fii' up
on us with the sense of Il completed har-
monv; deaths that end lives as sunset ends
the day; deaths when the work is done,
when the story is told, when the long iull
days travel is finished. Youth prepared
for the work in faithful prcnticehood ;
manhood did the work like a master. Pa
tiently. as the years passed, the appointed
duty was fulfilled, the prescribed burden
Az of La all finished
death comes to summon the laborer to his
rest.
They are deaths to thank God for
these deaths that end long "A fruitful life
with perfect close. They come with the
calmness of summer sunsets, that end the
day, with the dreamy regret of the lndi
an summer that ends the year. They seen
to belong to the diviner harmonies OF the
other world, to be the visitation OF Cod
eternal order here among the uncertain
iiac api nnufp Sims of time y