The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1882-05-26
MS GOD GAVE HIM REST"
MEMORIAL SERMON OF JUDGE A. GOULD,
DELIVERED IN coNG'L CHURCH A
2lsT, by REV. l.. ID.

brethren, when that future worlC
which we are fast approaching
pictures itself in our imagination
variously, in accordance with the
wants and ambitions of our souls.
To the child it is a place of sing
ing angels, bright-robed, flashing
winged, gold-crowned, a place o.
gently-fowing rivers banked with
flowers, and meadowed with i'm.
mortal verdure. No cloud crosses
the sun, no shadow falls upon the
earth and no tear from the eye.
That is the child's Heaven, and
who can say that it is not true.
To the young man, full of the
consciousness of untried powers,
eager, ambitious, untiring, who loves
labor for the very joy it gives him
to undertake and achieve, the eter.
nal world shows itself differently.
He says to himself, ga world full
of %white-winged angels and the
continual sound! of harps, and the
musical flow of rivers and the per-
fume of flowers, would indeed be
beautiful, but then, what should l
6o there? What is there to occupy
my thought, and give employment
to these mighty undeveloped
energies of my soul Let those
take up the golden harps who will,
and put on crowns who want them,
and lie down in pleasant pastures
and by the still waters, who need
rest for their souls, but / have got
TO do something, or Heaven would
be a prison to me and / could not
be happy. My Heaven is a place
of labor; a place of infinite
soul-capacity; sustained by in
finite soul-energies, developed by
infinite opportunity. These worlds
above me, filling the night
heavens with brilliancy, what are
they? Shall l not go to one of them
when | have left this world, and
live out another life of joyous, never
ending labor, and then to another,
and another, through the cycles Of
eternity. Are they not stepping
stones by which the soul tolls
upward, nearer and still nearer into
the presence of the Infinite God?
That is the young mans thought
of Heaven, and who shall say that
it may not be So. That there is
not in that future life which ''eye
hath not seen, moi ear heard, neither
hath entered into the heart of man
to conceive" a corresponding and
soul satisfying reality for him also.
And then, my brethren, there is
still another period of our life when
the dreams of childhood have faded
away, when the strong, quick pulse
of manhood beats the slow death
march to the grave, whenithe restless
spirit has ORR out the poor broken
frame of the body, when the hairs
whiten with age and trouble and
care, and there is nothing to look
forward to in the increasing years
but strength, labor and sorrow, and
then it is that all the anticipations
of that life beyond are summed up
in the one word, Rest And so it
was with him, whose memory we
celebrate this morning. LsL
He has lived a long lifetime OF
such intense and incessant activity,
thinking and acting continually with
such precision and force as few men
in a generation are capable of. AS
compared with the great mass of
men, his moments have been days
and his days have been years,
until, at length like one who has
been long upon the ocean and is
looking anxiously for the shore,
saying Tomorrow l shall be there
and at home," so he, during the
later years of his weary life, ever
looking upward to the home beyond
saw written over its portals, the
words of his bestowed hymn,
"Tnere is rest for the weary" And
who shall say that he also has not
found that which his soul longed for
1T