Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1905-07-20

Des Moines has honored sons
through public monuments, who, either
as statesmen or as soldiers, or who
in other public achievements, won
gratifying fame, but here today in
this pleasing testimonial we give eX-
preston to III love for one who lived
a quiet, simple life, ordained to minis
ter to the spiritual needs of the city's
pioneer community, and who, through
a long career OF great usefulness in
personal ways, by his sweet sincerity
and kindness, his charity and uplift-
ing faith, and by reason of the wide
influence of his teachings, left a strong
er impress upon the minds and a more
lasting affection in the hearts of this
people than is conceded to be true of
any citizen whose life and works have
hitherto called forth public consider
alton at our hands.
This beautiful plot of ground will
henceforth be deemed as consecrated
in the eyes of all who knew him and
we will associate his personality with
| every rightful purpose for which it
may be employed.
When the laughter of children, the
minstrelsy of birds, quicken these
| green silences into song, we may re-
call the ~caressing smile of one whose
heart was ever young, artless, inno-
cent and pure, and to whom music
and sweet sounds were but a part of
the delightful forms in which the har-
monies of the universe were voiced to
his spiritual understanding.
If the toll worn laborer who seeks
rest within it's shade, in meditating
| upon his discomfort, complains of the
unhappy fortune which denies him the
/ plenty which he covets, he may, If he
| will, reflect upon and profit from the
life of one who for far too many years
was forced to practice a rigid economy
| and who in his early manhood knew
the bitterness of want and the hard
exactiOns of poverty and toll; yet he
| preached u religion Of hope and cheer
| and peaceful content.
This quiet haunt may extend its
| peaceful influences to the weary Of
heart, and SO far as it may minister
to troubled lives, | think it will there
in express its deepest meaning and
almost sacred significance as a me-
| mortal to the good man. OF all the
incidents of his life we may now re-
call, those which spring to the fore
front of memory and i~nspire.our most
tender emotion relate to words or
prayers uttered out of his sympathetic
heart for, those whom he sought to
sOlace in their grief. Here the weary
and overburdened may come, and let
US hope that it may be permitted to
many of them to learn of the sanity
life of n who lived and wrought in
a sweet sincerity to comfort the for
saken and the s~orrOwing, and employ
ed his wisdom in the loving concern
of all.
In q retrospect Of the life of DR..
Nash with reference to this occasion,
| recall a college lecture in which he
dwelt upon the mystery of color as
eXemplitied in plant life; how the var
led hueS are derived out of the radi-
c of the sun, and through some
alchemy of the soil are reproduced in
the beauty of the flowers and the YER
dure of the fields. These only endure
their one brief season.: they glorify
the fields, their scents are liberated to
the air and their cOlOrs delight the
eye-only to fade and pass back into
the elements from whence they came.
Yet the forces of nature of which they
are part die. They may pass
through different transformations and
their changing forms employed to
changing purposes, but their vital
element is eternal. So, too, after q
life devoted to such 4 faith as DIR.
Nash dwelt in, and pe~rsonified in all
his works, endowed as he was with Il
peculiarly sweet kindness and mercy,
and who read into all his lessons a
beautiful religion of the heart to the
lasting benefit of those to follow after
him-when his earthly labors were
completed and his soul of gentleness
and love passed back to Him who is
the source of all light and life-there
was freed into our spiritual environ
ment something of that inefTable
essence which in his being charmed
and helped and soOthed. The spirit
of his wisdom, his kindness and faith
survives and will never die.