ranging widely in the fields of knowledge; thoroughly versed in the subjects of his profession, faithful to Christ, and heartily devoted to the best interests of mankind. No man ever questioned his learning, intelligence, integrity, or piety. He was never known to saerifice a righteous principle, to balk an honorable purpose, to shrink from a necessary sacrifice, to betray a trust, to speak evil of his neighbor, to renounce a friend or hate an enemy, to his dying day. We know not that a greater pattern of simplicity, guilelessness, and sincerity could be found on earth, among men practically conversant as he had been, for so long a time, with the bewildering and tempting world.

Here, indeed, was the beautiful element of his character, the solvent of his other qualities, which were fused and compounded by it, and took their spirit and direction from it. We have thought that if Jesus could have met him, as he met Nathanael, he would have said of him, and with equal pertinence: "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." He knew not how to be insincere. His brusk and untrained manner, which was his æsthetical defect, was yet an evidence of the unaffected simplicity of his heart. It was not that he undervalued the forms and courtesies of society, or was pharisaically contemptuous of the selfish etiquette of artificial life. He did not think of them. He had not the power of conceiving the states of a fashionable mind. He knew not how to act but according to the unconstrained working of an unsuspecting, uncalculating, generous spirit, that meant and imagined no evil; that asked not for compliments, nor supposed that others wanted them. The idea of saying or doing anything, in public or private, for effect, never occurred to him. According to his actual states of mind he wrote, talked, and preached, sometimes depressed and languid by reason of the painful vicissitudes of life; again, self-distrustful and anxious through fear that his labors might not find acceptance, though never without knowledge; never without a scholarly apprehension of his subjects; never without generous sentiments and affections; and often, forgetful of self and of the world, rising to a fervid and commanding eloquence, producing the natural effect of words fitly spoken-" apples of gold in pictures of silver." Nothing that was not real could

ever find an avenue to his mind; or, if aught insinuated itself by accident, it found no lodgment. We have marked this peculiarity for nearly twenty years, so as we never saw it in any other man, in his theology, ethics, and practical life. It was a nature in him, an instinct rather than a judg ment, by which he repelled, without any conscious effort, as by a necessary law, all pretence, artifice, sham, or what was merely incidental and collateral, and entered not essentially into the simplicities of things. Through this very quality of mind he would sometimes, indeed, be attracted by specious reasonings proceeding from those whom he had trusted as Christian teachers, for he thought no evil of good men; but when the concealed sophistry would not digest and assimilate, as it could not in his sincere spirit, it was insensibly thrown off, and a sanctified nature gently resumed its courses. Two or three such occasions we have known in respect to his theological opinions, which had been settled, from his youth, agreeably to the primitive standards of New England. When captivated, for a time, by some projected speculative improvements in the range of his profession, yet presently conscious that they could not be made to harmonize, as their advocates pretended, with his fixed ideas, he let them drop off from him, unconcernedly, as matters that could do no good, but evil, to himself or to the world. They did not fret him. Nothing fretted him. He was never provoked by them to merely partisan controversy or ill-natured personalities. He opposed them, not by contrary speculations, in which a more ingenious sophist might have foiled him, but stuck more closely and fondly to the unsophisticated gospel. He would say, "in another generation these new lights will have vanished, and more flashy meteors will appear. But the gospel ever lives." That was his touchstone for all the ambitious and pretending novelties of the times. Christ was his only master. What was not of Christ, but of this or that asserted Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, he let alone; and the old truths which had grown experimentally into his conscious soul, and had become a part of his inmost life, just grew on and brought forth fruit a hundred fold. Yet these old truths he would nourish by whatever new studies were fitted to open them more clearly or impressively to his active and reaching

mind. In all his professional researches, which were constant, various, and comprehensive, whatever was morally congenial was, as if spontaneously, taken up, and contributed to his enlargement, while whatever was really incongruous would just as naturally fall off thenceforth discarded and forgotten. He would never trouble himself about it. He would shout as one philosopher drove another off the stage, or as God's Spirit occasionally rebuked them all, and then turn away with new eagerness and a keener relish to the sincere milk of the word.

Hence it was that all Divine truths lay in his mind, not as dogmas for the intellect, and not as themes of curious. speculation, passports to popular renown, or the favor of great men, but as simple realities for the guidance of his personal and official life. He thought of them as realities, he discoursed of them as realities, and seemed not to imagine that other men would not so regard them, or that any studied rhetoric was needful to enforce them. No one could doubt that he believed everything he said, and as he said it, or that he believed and said it, not because it so stood in reason, but because it was so written, and that to say otherwise would be to set forth himself and not Jesus Christ. We often wished that he would say it with a livelier air, and a quicker sense of different or peculiar states of mind in the social circle, or popular assembly, and of what pertained to incidents or occasions of private or public moment. But, even then, sometimes, the quivering lip and faltering tongue would indicate emotions that he had not used himself to utter like other men, and that fell short of their effect only from the want of a more studied medium, such as we make more, and, possibly, too much account of. Sometimes the hidden fire would burn through the crust of an indifferent manner, and make us desire that it would burn for ever, as if a volcano could be in perpetual action. But, however, we were sure that he never spoke aught but the convictions of an honest mind, and that he would die sooner than renounce them. Some of his convictions he was almost afraid to utter, lest he should unduly stir a prejudice, or wound a sensitive conscience. But they were strong within him when most reserved. In what seemed his greatest mental restraint, or nervous languor, it has been

well observed, that when his train of thought led him to speak of Christ, of his dying love, his renewing grace, his glorious reign, of the state of the risen saints and the joys of heaven, these themes would covertly agitate and heave him, as if nothing but our more responsive sympathy were wanting to draw out his sacred passion till we should all melt together in a common love. Certain it was that the great truths which he had so carefully studied, and was so well able to defend, were as sure to him, and as living as his own soul. They were a part of himself. He no more doubted them than that he had a conscious spirit to know and feel them. Or, if any were yet measurably obscure to him, he believed as surely that they would, at length, be cleared, as that they were now obscure. At his family devotions he would sometimes say, especially when reading Paul's Epistles: "I wonder what the apostle means in that passage. I should like to know just how that lay in Paul's mind. Well, well, I shall know when I get to heaven. We shall all know, if we are so happy as to meet there; and then how we will talk about these things together!" Some passages of Scripture were so dear to him that he committed them to memory, to have them always ready for recall. Such were the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th chapters of John's Gospel, Christ's memorable discourse to his disciples, and his prayer for them, and yet more, the 15th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, from which my text is taken, containing his favorite doctrine of the resurrection. And he would have his family commit them; " for we may be sick," he said, "and unable to read our Bibles, and then we should have such rich matter to think upon." There was reality in that. Under the surface which he took so little pains to cultivate, there was a well of water springing up unto everlasting life.

Dr. Richards was a faithful student of the Bible. He went to it with greater zeal and confidence than ever a devout pagan to his oracle. He took it in his hand as if God had sent it down to himself particularly from heaven. He gathered from it as the old church gathered its manna in the desert, and never questioned what was written. He did not study Scripture after the fashion so common at the present time, but with the lexicon and concordance. He

made the Bible its own interpreter. His principle was the analogy of faith. He applied it wisely, disdaining no collateral helps that were really such, but judging that God best knew his own mind, and in what language to express it. Good criticism he liked; but denied that fancy and speculation should ever be brought to elucidate the words. of the Holy Ghost. He expounded according to the letter, when the word was literal. When it was figurative, he explained the figure according to the approved laws of rhetoric, not to mystify, annul, or conceal, but to intensify the letter. When it was symbolic, he let the symbol speak as God himself has so largely interpreted this peculiar vehicle of truth. As one of his friends commended him, at his funeral, he had largely the confidence of his brethren as a sound theologian and a liberal scholar. They honored his character, and respected his opinions. He comprehended, in his measure, as few are privileged to do, God's revealed plan of government by Jesus Christ, for he never asked what man imagines, but what God says about it, and that led him meekly and soberly into a wide compass of inquiry. When the mind of God, on any subject, was made plain to him, as it usually was, for he searched in the daylight, then he rested, laid up his gains, and went on to larger studies. His atmosphere was luminous. He would often say: "I never take up my Bible but I find something new, something I had not thought of, or that now appears in a new and more engaging light." We had great intimacy with him when our theological studies happened to lie in the same direction. We well remember a particular period when he was reconsidering some of his old opinions concerning the kingdom of God and the last times formed. after the received popular ideas. He thought he saw their fallacy. Gradually a more excellent way appeared. He opened his mind to receive whatever light the Scripture should shed upon him. It was delightful then to observe the working of his sincere, unaffected, and untrammelled spirit. He was meek, quiet, patient, docile, and submissive as a little child. Speak, Lord," he would say, "and let thy servant hear." When one dark thing after another opened itself to his eager view, he would come over immediately to our room, that we might rejoice together. In