MEMORIAL 
 
 ELIAS HUNTINGTON RICHARDSON, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE 
 
 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, 
 
 NEW BRITAIN, CONN. 
 
 HARTFORD, CONN.: 
 
 PRESS OF THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD COMPANY. 
 1883.

 
 THIS TRIBUTE 
 Jo THE /MEMORY OF OUR LATE CASTOR 
 
 IS MOST RESPECTFULLY PRESENTED 
 TO THE 
 
 PHURCH OF PHRIST IN J^EW BRITAIN, 
 
 AND 
 
 TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN ASSOCIATED IN THE CASTER'S WORK. 
 WITH THE 
 
 REV. . ji. RICHARDSON, p. p., 
 
 BY THOSE TO WHOM ITS PREPARATION WAS INTRUSTED.
 
 MEMORIAL. 
 
 REV. ELIAS HUNTINGTON RICHARDSON, D.D., pastor of 
 the First Church of Christ in New Britain, Connecticut, fell 
 asleep on the twenty-seventh of June, 1883. 
 
 On Thursday, May seventeenth, he attended the anniver- 
 sary exercises at the Theological Seminary in New Haven, 
 and addressed the Alumni. This was his last public service. 
 On the next day, at his home, he was stricken with pneu- 
 monia, from which, however, he so far recovered as to walk 
 about the house and ride out. On Saturday, June sixteenth, 
 he was seized with a chill, believed to be caused by blood- 
 poisoning from an abscess in the lungs. Other chills fol- 
 lowed. His strength failed, and he sank to rest at about 
 three o'clock in the morning of the day first named above. 
 
 Dr. Richardson was born in Lebanon, N. H., August II, 
 1827, was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1850, and 
 pursued his theological studies in the seminary at Andover, 
 Mass., completing the course in 1853. 
 
 May 15, 1854, he was married in Plainfield, N. H., to 
 Jane M. Stevens, who, with four sons, survives him. 
 
 His first settlement in the ministry was in Goffstown, 
 N. H., where he was ordained and installed May 18, 1854. 
 In December, 1856, he was installed pastor of the First 
 Church in Dover, N. H., and in December, 1863, of the 
 Richmond Street Church in Providence, R. I. He became
 
 pastor of the First church in Westfield, Mass., in 1867; of 
 the First Church of Christ in Hartford, Conn., April 24, 
 1872 ; and of this church, January 7, 1878. 
 
 The funeral services occurred on Friday, June twenty- 
 ninth. At ten o'clock prayer was offered at the residence of 
 the family by Rev. G. H. Miner, pastor of the Baptist 
 Church in this city. The body was then borne to the 
 church, where, until the commencement of the public ser- 
 vices, at two o'clock, an opportunity was given, of which 
 many hundreds availed themselves, to look once more on the 
 face of him who had been so widely respected and so much 
 beloved. 
 
 The pulpit was appropriately draped in mourning. Beau- 
 tiful floral offerings from the young people of the First 
 Church in Hartford, from Catholic citizens, and from the 
 Order of United American Mechanics, as well as from mem- 
 bers of his own church and congregation, testified to the 
 affectionate esteem in which the deceased pastor was held 
 by those presenting them. 
 
 At the time fixed for the public services the church was 
 filled. Many clergymen were present, and also delegations 
 from the churches in Westfield and Hartford of which Dr. 
 Richardson had been pastor. 
 
 The exercises were as follows : 
 
 A selected double quartette sang the hymn beginning, 
 " Come, ye disconsolate," after which Rev. G. H. Miner read 
 selections from the Scriptures. Prayer was then offered by 
 Rev. Geo. L. Walker, D.D., pastor of the First Church, 
 Hartford, and the choir sang "Jesus, lover of my soul." 
 Rev. Nathaniel J. Burton, D.D., pastor of the Park Church, 
 Hartford, then delivered the following address :
 
 ADDRESS OF THE REV. DR. BURTON. 
 
 I am here to testify of my admiration and my love for 
 Elias H. Richardson, to mingle my lamentation with yours 
 that he has left us, to bless God for his faithful, fruitful life, 
 to rejoice in the Paradise which he has won, and to think of 
 that sure-coming day when we may be with him again in the 
 presence of God and His glory, as also in the presence 
 of a company untold of earth-born creatures redeemed and 
 brought home by the power and mercy of God. For, my 
 brethren, and all ye mournful ones, it is not right for us to 
 take a purely this-world view of such a death as this. On 
 the earthly side there are clouds and tears, but man is a two- 
 world being, and his earthly is to his heavenly as a moment 
 is to a millenium, and to dwell only on this present state, and 
 not permit that other estate to qualify our judgment of this 
 and throw upon it its imperishable irradiations, were as 
 though you should judge a grand orchestra by their miscel- 
 laneous preludings while they are laboriously tuning their 
 many strings. 
 
 My admiration and my love, I said, for Dr. Richardson 
 both so strong that they would have brought me here to-day 
 even if I had not been sent for. 
 
 It is no time now, pressed as we are by the duties of this 
 sad occasion, to make a full analysis of his qualities and 
 recite the full story of his honorable career ; but I will, in a 
 rapid way, touch some of those features of his constitution 
 and character, which must occur directly to any one who 
 knew him. 
 
 First Speaking of his intellect, I will say I have always 
 ranked him among our ablest men. He was a solid thinker, 
 and what he thought he was able to express in terms of great 
 affluence and of frequent beauty. I have had but few oppor-
 
 8 
 
 tunities of listening to him in careful public discourse, but 
 when I did it always occurred to me that if his mind had 
 been more second-grade than it was, less disposed and less 
 able to rationalize in general principles and more prone to 
 reduce the stuff and stock of his utterance to particulariza- 
 tions, concretes, and all that ; and if, moreover, he had been 
 less able, under the inspiration of his themes, to roll forth in 
 a not unfrequent noble redundancy of diction, the rank and 
 file of humanity who were privileged to hear him habitually 
 would have been less strained to keep along with him than 
 they sometimes must have been, I imagine. What a good 
 thinking faculty he had ! I never knew him to deliver a 
 really thin and weak address. Very likely he has, as we all 
 do when we are tired, or half sick, or close pressed by our 
 many duties, or a little disconsolate for some reason, but the 
 habitual and average movement of his intellect was forceful, 
 suggestive, and impressive. Even in the most sudden extem- 
 porizations he would not dribble, and scatter, and lose him- 
 self, and spurt forth unsubstantial things, but his faculties 
 served him well, and some of the exhibitions of his capacity 
 that I most vividly and gladly remember, were made on a 
 momentary impulse when he was aroused by special circum- 
 stances. 
 
 I dwell fondly on these things now that that athletic and 
 trained mind is taken from us, and those speaking lips are 
 dumb. Dumb to us he is, but somewhere, and encompassed 
 by some who will be glad to listen, he still speaks on the 
 dear topics which inflamed his enthusiasm here, and made 
 him a messenger of God unto the children of men. For no 
 good thing goes to waste in the dominions of God, and the 
 fine developments of this present life are certainly utilized 
 along the great ranges of the Hereafter.
 
 Secondly But Dr. Richardson's intellect, whatever we 
 may say in admiration of it, was not the major thing in him. 
 In some men it is ; they are all intellect and no character, 
 and nothing much to love. 
 
 In an enumeration of his moral qualities, I should first 
 mention, as very fundamental in the sum total of him, that 
 he was a servant of God by conscious volition, and by habit. 
 Long years ago he took his stand on that point of ail points, 
 and his individuality was fashioned thereby supremely, and 
 to all eternity will be. As well analyze a flower, and in your 
 analysis leave out the principle of life, without which no one 
 would ever think of its being a flower at all, as to analyze 
 this man, and omit this utterly resolved consecration of his. 
 That made him a minister. That made him a good minister. 
 That gave a specific character and a never-failing zest to 
 the workings of his intellect. That breathed- a suffusion 
 through his entire personality. That marked out his life in 
 its whole detail. Thank God for it. Thank God that he laid 
 his hand on that New England boy and touched his heart 
 and the springs of his will, and made him to be his resolved 
 and indefatigable servant and apostle forever. 
 
 Of course this consecration of his showed itself in ways 
 peculiar to his natural and hereditary make-up. For exam- 
 ple, it came out in a more uniform seriousness, and a more 
 unremitting moral intensity, than is manifested by some 
 equally consecrated men. Dr. Richardson could laugh in a 
 total movement of soul and body ; he had some bedewings 
 of humor, and he enjoyed the humor of his brethren; still he 
 was principally occupied with the graver aspects of life, its 
 solemn questions, its solemn duties, its stupendous liabilities, 
 and the great destinies in which it eventuates ; and I have 
 sometimes thought that he would have increased his own
 
 10 
 
 happiness and length of days, and at the same time not have 
 decreased his usefulness if he could have kept himself less 
 strung up, and strenuous, and morally responsible. This 
 robust and unsleeping earnestness had its great uses, I need 
 not say. It drew to him universal confidence and respect. 
 It made his theological and other thinking determined and 
 clear. It made his opinions steadfast. It gave him a ready 
 answer to all questions of morals. He knew whether it 
 was right to frequent theaters or not, and he knew every 
 day in the year. Also he was outright and courageous in 
 making known his views on all important subjects on proper 
 occasions. These fine nobilities, I say, were secured by that 
 high earnestness and tenseness, which was the prevailing 
 feature of his constitution ; and in a world too full of people 
 frivolous and unresponsible and unpurposed, it does not 
 become us to criticise such a man very much ; still I fancy 
 we might have had him longer, and might have more enjoyed 
 his enjoyment of life if he could, so to speak, have slackened 
 his heroic conscience a little, and his wiry vigor, and his 
 manful push, and push. 
 
 But let us pass on to other traits, and get in all our data, 
 before we generalize much on Dr. Richardson. 
 
 I spoke of his firm opinions, but right along side of that 
 there lay a catholicity and a toleration of others' ideas and 
 judgments, as broad and brotherly as you could ask. He 
 was a Congregationalist, but it never occurred to him to 
 persecute a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Romanist, or take 
 any mean advantage of them. And what is more and 
 harder, he did not in the least disrelish his Congregational 
 brethren who might dissent from this or that in his theology. 
 Let that be said for him. 
 
 Let it be said, too, that he always sought his ends straight-
 
 II 
 
 forwardly. Guile was absolutely impossible to his fine 
 nature. 
 
 Also that he was pure. He looked it. His spare phy- 
 sique, his uncarnal face, his honest outlook, his prevailing 
 intellectualism as your eye rested on him, told the story of a 
 man unsmirched, and impossible to be tampered with. 
 
 Also he had, in large measure, that which we may call 
 magnanimity. I have said as much as that already, I sup- 
 pose, but I want to mention it again, and lead you on to a 
 wider conception of that thing in him than you could get 
 from my saying that he was broad-minded and charitable 
 towards the opinions of other men, or from my saying that 
 he was unguileful and the like. He was magnanimous. 
 Not large-minded ; that isn't it. The devil is large-minded. 
 Not that, but large-natured ; large in his feeling, large in his 
 way of dealing with things. Now, millions of people seem 
 reasonably magnanimous in ordinary life, but the moment 
 they are subjected to the pressure of a supreme test, they 
 squeak forth into some littleness. They get very poor, and 
 cheat. They are heavily ridiculed, and then lie. They see 
 a friend sinking into universal disrepute on account of some- 
 thing that is really an honor to him, and they speak not a 
 word in his defence and perhaps join his enemies. They are 
 invited to accept an honor in disrespect of the rights of 
 another man, and they accept it. They and a whole ship's 
 company are in extreme peril, and their entire nature, under 
 the stress of fear, is suddenly corrupted into absolute, 
 unthinking selfishness. Or they are sorely wronged by 
 some one and become so demonized by resentment that no 
 act is so ignoble or unclean that they will not resort to it. 
 
 I run through this scandalous list of familiar human infir- 
 mities, in order to say that our friend could not be forced
 
 12 
 
 into any such things. I saw him once when he was indig- 
 nant and grieved by a certain thing which had been done 
 bearing on him, and when there was a good opportunity to 
 be resentful toward me, for it looked as though I had had 
 some hand in it; but after a little shaking in the wind and a 
 little feeling around to see where he was, he emerged in as 
 sweet a magnanimity as I ever saw. I shall never forget it. 
 I learned more of his essential royalty in half an hour then 
 than I might have learned in years. He exonerated me. 
 He spoke of the one who was really to be blamed with 
 entire kindness. He confessed to me that for a few moments 
 he had been tempted to act on his indignation, but rejoiced 
 that now he had chosen the larger way ; the way that is of 
 patience under wrong, and a discharge from one's memory 
 of the ever recurring inevitable frictions of life and society. 
 I have no time to illustrate further. Many things crowd 
 upon me to be said, but I cannot say them. I congratulate 
 you all that your friend was what he was. I congratulate 
 his sons that they have had such a father, and his wife that 
 it has been her's to have such an one, and this congregation 
 that they could have such a man for their minister, though 
 it was but for a time, and this community that they have 
 enjoyed such a citizen, and the Congregational ministers of 
 Connecticut that they have lived in the fellowship of a man 
 so admirable and lovable, and the several churches near and 
 afar, where he has served, that they have had his service, 
 his right-minded, strong-minded, and unimpeachable service ; 
 a service whose fruitage God will not permit to fail ; and I 
 congratulate our New England homes that they do still rear 
 these well-built and formidable men, these specimens of 
 primitive force, these cultured and modulated Puritans, these 
 clear-voiced theologians, these preachers with the thunders
 
 13 
 
 of the Old Testament in them, and the melodies of the New, 
 these square-cut granite corner stones of society and the 
 State, these sons of the Lord God Almighty, and heirs of 
 eternal life; what an element they will be in the constitution 
 of heaven ; how reverent their strong voices when they sing 
 the song of Moses and the Lamb ; how solid their holiness ; 
 how masculine and abounding their eternal service ; how all 
 heaven will inevitably nucleate around these stalwart ele- 
 ments, from whatever homes in all the broad earth they 
 come, even as here on earth all history has pivoted on their 
 vigor, their loyalty to God, and their perdurable toughness in 
 the crush and crash of Fate. 
 
 In these strong words concerning men like Dr. Richardson, 
 I hope I have not done injustice to those gentle attributes 
 which they often possess, and to that beautiful culture with 
 which they are often adorned. What culture is there so 
 satisfying as that which is laid on substantial and massive 
 character, and what gentleness is there so gentle and heart- 
 melting as that of thoroughly charactered and powerful men. 
 If we might, on this public occasion, invade the privacies of 
 Dr. Richardson's life, we could show his mellowness, his 
 tender fidelities, his suffusions of sentiment, and all those 
 kindly and heart-warm things which are like the vines, 
 grasses, and flowers that soften and beautify the rock-ribbed 
 structure of the globe on which we live. 
 
 But I cease from utterance and leave you to your own 
 thoughts. You will not forget this man. His family cannot. 
 Those here to whom he has really ministered cannot. Some 
 of you have had your minds cleared by his instructions ; 
 some of you have been strengthened for the struggle of life 
 by his exhortations and his expositions of God's truth ; some 
 of you have been comforted in your great sorrows by his
 
 good words ; some of you have found your way to Christ by 
 his leadings ; he has buried your dead and baptized your 
 children, and pronounced the benediction of God on your 
 bridals ; and while stars shine, or rivers roll, or the human 
 heart is true, many of you will often recall this dear man 
 whom we are compelled now to bury, but whom, please God, 
 we shall see again when, this corruptible shall have put on 
 incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, 
 
 and death is swallowed up of life. Amen. 
 
 
 
 At the close of the address prayer was offered by Rev. 
 W. L. Gage, D.D., pastor of the Pearl Street Church, Hart- 
 ford. This was followed by singing, " We shall meet beyond 
 the river," and the benediction was pronounced by Rev. 
 M. B. Boardman, a member of this Church. 
 
 The body was borne from the church by Deacons Strong, 
 Blake, Northend, Hungerford, Clary, and Davison, and prayer 
 was offered at the grave by Rev. J. H. Twichell, pastor of 
 Asylum Hill Church, Hartford. 
 
 In the evening of the same day, in place of the usual 
 lecture preparatory to the communion, a memorial service 
 was held in the chapel, at which appropriate remarks were 
 made by the leader, Rev. M. B. Boardman, by Rev. G. H. 
 Miner, and by others. The following minute, prepared and 
 presented by order of the Church Committee, was unani- 
 mously adopted : 
 
 WHEREAS, our Heavenly Father has seen fit sorely to afflict 
 us by removing from us our beloved pastor, this church adopts 
 the following minute and directs that it be entered on its records 
 as a recognition of the fidelity of our pastor and friend, and a 
 token of our grateful appreciation of that strong affection which 
 made it his dying request that he might be laid to rest among this 
 people :
 
 Rev. Elias H. Richardson, D.D., since January 7, 1878, the 
 beloved pastor of this church, entered into rest June 27, 1883, in 
 the 56th year of his age. The ministrations to this people of 
 another of God's servants are ended, and we lift our hearts to the 
 great Head of the Church for grace, wisdom, and guidance. 
 
 The ministry now terminated has been marked by great fervor, 
 tenderness, and love on the part of the pastor, and by affection 
 and unanimity on the part of his people; consequently it has been 
 an era of prosperity and spiritual upbuilding for this church, now 
 so sorely bereaved. 
 
 From the time of his settlement here, while laboring earnestly 
 to promote the welfare of the church, he has always been ready 
 to do all in his power to lift up and encourage the weak, relieve 
 the distressed, comfort the afflicted, reclaim the wandering, and 
 stimulate all to strive for spiritual growth. 
 
 While this afflictive dispensation falls with special weight on 
 this church, we feel that the city has suffered a great loss in the 
 removal of one whose influence was powerful for the promotion of 
 every good object, and the suppression of everything tending to 
 wrong. 
 
 It would have been our will that a relation so endearing as that 
 between Dr. Richardson and his people should have continued, 
 but as it has pleased God to remove our standard-bearer, we 
 remember with grateful hearts His goodness to us in the past, and 
 commit our interests to Him in the future. 
 
 To the stricken wife, from whom a loving husband has been 
 removed, and to the children bereft of a fond father, we extend 
 our tenderest sympathy." 
 
 On the Sabbath following the funeral, memorial discourses 
 were delivered in Hartford by Rev. Geo. L. Walker, D.D., 
 and W. L. Gage, D.D. The latter, by request, was repeated 
 in the pulpit lately occupied by Dr. Richardson, on the 23d 
 of September. 
 
 This, and an extract from the discourse of Rev. Dr. Walker, 
 are here given.
 
 i6 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. W. L. GAGE, D.D. 
 
 Among the dead of this year, in this immediate neighbor- 
 hood, known in Hartford and all the towns adjacent, as well 
 as here in New Britain, has been Elias Huntington Richard- 
 son. Of this man can be said, as was said of the late Rev. 
 Prof. Johnson of Hartford, that he is remembered with pecul- 
 iar affection. He was* for seven, years the pastor of our 
 oldest Hartford church, and while in that high office he 
 adorned the pulpit by the display of those graces which are 
 distinctively and beautifully Christian. By those who knew 
 him well he is remembered as a most interesting representa- 
 tive of precisely that which a Christian minister is bound to 
 display, meekness, simplicity, candor, purity, unselfishness, 
 and enthusiasm for souls. My own recollection of these 
 qualities in him is made the more vivid by those occasional 
 bursts of impatience, of righteous anger, of rigorous criti- 
 cism, in which the deep force of his nature showed itself ; 
 a certain violence and volcanic impetuousness which of late 
 years never appeared in his public addresses, save as the 
 normal and regulated heat and fire of his eloquent passages. 
 Strange to say, this most modest and meek of men was in 
 his first ministerial years a preacher of such stress, such 
 excited and impassioned speech, that his voice not infre- 
 quently rose to a pitch that was painful to his hearers, and his 
 denunciations were so eager as to call out a kind of reaction 
 as if from overstatements and unintentional misapprehensions 
 of fact. In ten years or so all this passed away, and it was 
 common to speak of him as the St. John of the pulpit. 
 From that time to this, there has been but one voice regard- 
 ing his beautiful and almost saintly spirit. 
 
 My own acquaintance with Dr., then Mr. Richardson, began 
 in the year 1856, twenty-seven years ago. He had just been
 
 settled in the small town of Goffstown, N. H., and I was 
 pastor of the Unitarian Church in Manchester, just adjoining. 
 But in the wide divergences which separated a Unitarian and 
 a Congregational minister in those days, we should proba- 
 bly not have met, save from the fact that that same village 
 of GofTstown had been my mother's birth-place, and the 
 home of many of my maternal relatives. In the house of 
 one of these, a sister of my mother, Mr. Richardson was an 
 inmate for a considerable period, and to that house he 
 brought his bride. My own mother died while I was in 
 Europe in 1855, and it was at my aunt's house in Goffstown 
 that my father met the Richardsons, and out of the acquaint- 
 ance there formed grew his second marriage with Mrs. 
 Richardson's sister. This event threw me, of course, into 
 intimate relations with Mr. Richardson. We were very good 
 friends, I think, though we were very violent opponents. 
 Our controversies often ran so high that it was hard to 
 see how we could ever come to any kind of peaceable 
 terms again. I have no doubt that in those encounters 
 I gave him abundant occasion for his vehemence. His 
 ministry in this pleasant town lasted for about two years 
 and a half, and I find in my annual visits to my friends that 
 he is still vividly remembered, although his best qualities had 
 by no means matured at that time. He was, however, a hard 
 student and a close thinker ; he showed, even then, that close 
 logical power, and that ready skill in handling his thoughts 
 and putting them into most copious expression, which are so 
 well remembered with us. His sincerity, his earnestness, 
 his love of men, his faithfulness, all these came to light in 
 that early ministry; his mental culture went on/- his moral 
 culture kept pace with it, and there were not wanting some 
 bright minds among those good people, who even then dis- 
 3
 
 i8 
 
 earned the great qualities which were stored away in that 
 earnest man. 
 
 At length, after about two and a half years, they were 
 surprised to hear that their pastor had been called to the old 
 and strong First Church in Dover, N. H., one of those large 
 and influential congregations whose origin was in the early 
 days of New England, and whose strength had gone on 
 increasing for over two hundred years. It was a noble posi- 
 tion ; in the audience were many men of fine talents, and at 
 once . the reserves of Mr. Richardson began to appear. In 
 the town lived John P. Hale, a man of national reputation, 
 both as lawyer and politician, at that time perhaps the most 
 illustrious name in the U. S. Senate. Other men were 
 grouped around him in Dover, not greatly Mr. Rale's infe- 
 rior in mental power. This piqued and spurred the young 
 pastor to his best, and I have seldom in my life heard 
 such addresses as he used to give. He was greatly beloved 
 as well as respected ; his church contained a few of those 
 men whose strength lies in their goodness, who believe in 
 the Church and its mission, and in Christian work, and in 
 the humble Christian virtues, and it was with those men that 
 Mr. Richardson found himself most at home ; they were his 
 constant and nearest intimates ; while the men of intellect 
 in his congregation, many of them not members of the 
 Church, stimulated. his mind and drew out his most brilliant 
 powers. I had the most abundant opportunities of knowing 
 him then, for I had come out from the Unitarians, and was 
 then pastor of the Old North Church in Portsmouth, N. H., 
 only eight miles from Dover, and Mr. Richardson was one of 
 my nearest" ministerial friends. We exchanged pulpits fre- 
 quently, and were much together besides. He rejoiced in 
 my settled Trinitarian convictions, and was of constant help
 
 19 
 
 to me in those years while I was rejoicing in the truth which 
 from that time to this I have preached. He was a delightful 
 man, full of stimulation, of new thoughts, enthusiastic plans. 
 Every good thing was dear to him ; every good man was 
 precious to him. Those seven years abounded in pleasant- 
 ness, and he carried the memory of his Dover pastorate ever 
 after in his heart of hearts. He had lost the excitability 
 and over-vehemence of his early pastorate, he had begun to 
 understand man and men better, he had acquired catholicity 
 of feeling and had entered upon his best manhood. Here 
 his Arthur was born and his home became more full than 
 ever of household joy. He was always a singularly domestic 
 man. He was never happy away from his wife and children ; 
 he was always happy with them. It was probably the highest 
 of all his reasons for gratitude that his marriage was one of 
 ideal happiness ; it was apparently unclouded by a film. It 
 has remained so to the end, and with his four boys he has to 
 his latest day been constantly renewing his youth and his 
 life. 
 
 Never could father be more to his sons than Mr. Richard- 
 son to his. With them he was perfectly at home. Not 
 making himself boyish, he was yet always a boy; and the 
 blending of his constant dignity with that lovely simplicity 
 of character, made one think of the blessing of Jesus upon 
 those who become as little children. As was said of Bunsen, 
 he had the brain of a man with the heart of a child. And 
 so his boys loved him best of all comrades ; for he felt as 
 they felt ; he did not have to come down to them ; there 
 was that inextinguishable youngness in him which gave 
 them the benefit of his wisdom, while they shared his enthu- 
 siasm and overflow of life. His sons will remember him 
 to their last days, certainly the three oldest, as the cheeriest 
 and brightest and most delightful of companions.
 
 2O 
 
 Mr. Richardson was just what one would call a charm- 
 ing man. He yas open, enthusiastic, youthful, playful, a 
 lover of nature, a great walker, athletic in every sense, a 
 hater of all shams, a friend of men, and the more uncon- 
 ventional the man, the greater his love ; an admirer of all 
 workers and of all people who have any mission and any 
 needed place in the world. If there was a spark of earnest- 
 ness in his neighborhood he would be sure to find it out. 
 I never detected in him a lurking particle of sympathy with 
 that which is gross, coarse, or sensual ; he always seemed to 
 be as pure as the air and the light. A simple-hearted, 
 naturally joyous, honest, earnest man, wearing all these 
 qualities so clearly that they were refreshingly and charm- 
 ingly apparent ; and yet not a man to be cheated or 
 cajoled; not a man whom confidence men of any kind 
 would select as an easy victim. He was so good that he 
 repelled all bad elements from him. 
 
 Yet he was prudent, sagacious, careful ; a man who 
 looked forward and made provision for the coming time ; 
 full of worldly wisdom of the right sort ; practical, with 
 good sense and with the judgment to counsel others, and I 
 think he would have been a good business man had he 
 turned that way ; and he was no worse a minister that he 
 was a model in those things which become men of affairs. 
 
 He spent his seven years at Dover calmly and wisely, and 
 then came the invitation to Providence. How well I remem- 
 ber the anxious hours spent over that call; nay, the anxious 
 days and weeks. It was from a small New England city to 
 one of the largest and best known ; it was to a considerable 
 increase in salary, and that meant more ease in living, more 
 enjoyment of books and travel, more advantages for his 
 family, more of that which makes life desirable. I do not
 
 21 
 
 know that he can be said to have made a mistake in going, 
 for the road lay through Providence to Westfield, Hartford, 
 and New Britain. Yet it was not a pleasant pastorate ; it 
 was a three years' stay where what was best in him was not 
 revealed. 
 
 A fragment of the congregation had not chosen him as 
 its favorite candidate, and after his induction into the 
 office to which he had been almost unanimously called, 
 this slender minority did not fail to remind him of its 
 existence. The effect was like the introduction of a bit of 
 sand into a watch, for Mr. Richardson was one of the most 
 sensitive of men, and the existence of friction in any form 
 jarred on every chord of his most finely-strung and responsive 
 soul. Other men would have been roused to a defiant 
 resistance ; he simply grieved and suffered. But he did not 
 show what he was. And to his dying day, while remember- 
 ing gratefully many cherished friends, he could not repress 
 the memory of the chill which came to his best forces from 
 some who did not give him what a minister has a right to 
 expect from every member of his church. Yet despite this, 
 he left the church stronger than he found it, and departed 
 with the esteem of the entire city. 
 
 At the end of these four years he was called to Westfield, 
 where he had a delightful pastorate of about five years, fol- 
 lowing Dr. Emerson Davis, one of the grand old patriarchal 
 ministers of Massachusetts, and having the young Harry 
 Hopkins as his neighbor minister in the Second Congrega- 
 tional Church. I do not think that he was quite so happy 
 here as at Dover, for he had those trials which may be 
 found in a parish made up of men widely varying in culture 
 and in views of life. But he did enjoy in Westfield some of 
 the warmest and most stimulative friendships of his life. 
 That rare power of drawing the love and confidence of men
 
 22 
 
 was wonderfully displayed in Westfield. He stood high 
 among the ministers of that region. An address of his, 
 given extemporaneously at a temperance gathering in one 
 of the towns of the Connecticut valley, is still referred to as 
 one of extraordinary eloquence ; one which would rival the 
 greatest speeches of the greatest men. His powers had 
 reached their finest ; his nature had expanded to its broadest. 
 He became at this time a student of Emerson, and the rest 
 of his life bore the fruit of this affluent culture, which, 
 without in the least undermining his piety or his settled 
 theological principles, gave color and brilliancy to all his 
 sentences. Mr. Richardson became a wide, thorough, and 
 discriminating reader ; not in theological lines alone, but in all 
 the best and most helpful authors. He was not much 
 seen at lectures and conceits, but he was very much in his 
 library, and he kept up intimate relations with the greatest 
 and kingliest spirits of our age and the past. 
 
 In due time he came to Hartford. In this again, strangely, 
 his life intertwines with my own. When I was settled there 
 he gave me the charge. I well remember it, and doubtless 
 others do who heard it more than fifteen years ago. His 
 theme was " Have the same mind in you which was in 
 Christ," and he developed it in an original and delightful 
 manner, quite unlike the tone of most charges to ministers. 
 This admirable address was remembered by some of the 
 leading spirits of the Center Church, and by-and-by, when 
 there was a vacancy in that honorable pulpit, inquiries 
 were made about the slight, spirited, spirituel minister who 
 had given that beautiful charge. This led to an interview ; 
 this to a call ; and in good time Mr. Richardson, soon Dr. 
 Richardson, was with us. Of his seven years' ministry in 
 Hartford there is no need that I speak. How he endeared
 
 23 
 
 himself especially to the enfeebled, the young, the disfavored 
 classes ; how he wrought in the great Moody meetings ; how 
 meekly, quietly, earnestly, lovingly, he took his place in all 
 good words and works, is well remembered. With what 
 dignity he passed from the First Church in Hartford to the 
 First Church in New Britain, we all recall. That he was 
 not in his whole make-up quite so well adapted to the 
 atmosphere of the one church as to that of the other, has 
 been demonstrated by the extraordinary success of his 
 ministry in New Britain. Here he could show better than 
 in Hartford his intense interest in men who are engaged 
 in the strenuous toils of manufacturing life. If there was 
 one thing about Dr. Richardson which was striking, it was 
 his democratic spirit his love of working men; he had the 
 enthusiasm of humanity at heart more than almost any 
 person whom I ever knew ; and if he could find men in 
 their shop aprons, and with grimy hands, it drew him all 
 the more. The hundreds of persons, Catholic and Pro- 
 testant, who passed by his coffin, bore tribute to the affec- 
 tion felt towards him by the working men of New Britain. 
 He had in his church there just what made his life happy: 
 many men of very uncommon intelligence, college trained 
 men, lawyers, physicians, teachers, and a great number of 
 those who work in iron, and steel, and brass, and wood, 
 skilled men, plain in all their habits, the bone and sinew 
 of society ; and these and their families, constituting a 
 large and prosperous church, made his life full, yes, brim- 
 ming with happiness. All his best gifts were appreciated 
 and stimulated. In his own church he was tenderly loved, 
 in the community he was universally respected. The 
 strongest men in New Britain were the men who recog- 
 nized in him a splendid intellect as well as what all saw, a
 
 24 
 
 noble heart. His eye for the beauties of scenery was con- 
 stantly trained, and there was not a road for a dozen miles 
 around which he had not traversed on foot, seeking and 
 knowing the finest trees, the most beautiful outlooks, the 
 loveliest glades and woods. His theological studies grew 
 more and more thorough, and he was constantly wanted to 
 give utterance to the result of his special researches. 
 When a few years ago we sought a man who should best 
 sum up Dr. Bushnell's theology, Dr. Richardson was the 
 man selected ; when again we required a man who could 
 best express what is commonly called the moral theory of 
 the Atonement, he was the chosen one. In both cases he, 
 with characteristic modesty, declined. 
 
 Physically he was cast in a fine mould. All muscle, not a 
 spare ounce of fat upon him, he was like steel wire ; and it 
 was his boast that scarcely any man could be found who had 
 been obliged to give up preaching fewer Sundays than he. 
 He could always rely on that steel-like frame, and could out- 
 tire almost all other men. It was the standing jest of his 
 home that his slight figure called forth constant appre- 
 hensions of his premature decline, and constant sympathy 
 with his apparently over-wrought powers ; and when one 
 thinks how vital he was ; at what a rate he could talk, hour 
 after hour, on high and kindly themes, it is wonderful how 
 strong and sound he kept himself all through the nine and 
 twenty years of his ministry. 
 
 In these latest years I have seen less, far less of him, than 
 in those earlier ones. It is the old story, those whom you 
 can see at any time, you do not always see the most. But I 
 have watched his course with great interest, noted his public 
 sayings, rejoiced in his successes. And especially have I 
 delighted in this last crowning ministry at New Britain,
 
 25 
 
 which has been of undoubted joy and peace. Out ot it, in 
 mid-career, he has been translated, leaving the glorious 
 trail of precious qualities and precious memories behind. If 
 he has an enemy on the earth I know not where he is to be 
 found. If there be a man who denies that he had almost 
 apostolic piety, I do not know his name. If there be a 
 brother minister who has not acknowledged him to be a 
 master spirit, signally gifted, most acute, logical, and tenacious, 
 I have not met him. He was not an ardent sectarian ; his 
 Christianity was much larger than his churchism ; he was 
 not bigoted but he became more lovely and sweet-hearted 
 all his life. When he was younger his personal prejudices 
 used to be distinct and uttered with a good deal of warmth ; 
 these too were modulated in the later years, as he came to 
 know men better and make allowances for them. That a 
 nature so intense as his could be so charitable, that a nature 
 so sensitive could be so magnanimous, that a nature so proud 
 could be so humble, this was the wonder of his character, 
 this was the Christian part. It was because he himself had 
 the mind of Christ, that in his charge to me when I began 
 my ministry in Hartford, he bade me " Have the mind of 
 Christ." And so when we think of him it is as the Christian 
 that we remember him. I might recall a dozen eminent 
 ministers, whose names suggest wit, knowledge, brilliancy, 
 and other traits more or less pungent and attractive, but as 
 you think of our friend, as in your imagination you see him 
 pass before you, as you all can and will while I speak to you, 
 you see in him the Christian, the meek, modest, sincere, 
 earnest, faithful, self-forgetting Christian. It is a sweet 
 vision which I call before your memory, that sharply cut, 
 pure, and in these latter years, distinguished face, that lithe, 
 athletic form, the movement not so free and plastic as we 
 4
 
 26 
 
 could wish, but the air always modest and quiet. How little of 
 self-assertion as he moved. How little of swell or bombast as 
 he spoke. Christ's own man, in word, in truth, in deed. A 
 consistent, every-day Christian, a rounded, beautiful life. As 
 I remember him, a very human kind of man, merry, light- 
 hearted, jocose. It was always an unsettled point between 
 us which wrote the worse hand and we never met without 
 having to translate some undecipherable passage in each 
 other's letters, over which we had of course our frequent 
 bursts of laughter, especially when we were unable to read 
 our own writing. A dear, human man, and yet always a true 
 servant of Christ. Not infrequently cast down with cares, 
 and looking out over the future with a kind of doubtful 
 uneasiness ; yet soon rallying and mounting up on eagle's 
 wings of hope and confidence. I am glad to speak to many 
 to-night who have known and loved him ; who have been 
 delighted to recall his goodness and retrace his power ; to 
 some, it may be, who through him have found the way to God, 
 and rejoice in Jesus through his precious ministry. You 
 will not forget him. You will not cease to pray for his 
 household, for that wife so endeared to hundreds among you, 
 for those sons, no one * of whom bears the father's name, 
 but all of whom we trust will wear his graces and shine in 
 the luster of his untarnished character. 
 
 I have said almost nothing about his earlier years, for I 
 have seldom heard him speak of them. He was fifty-six 
 years old, and was a native of New Hampshire, I think of 
 the town of Lebanon, on the Connecticut river just opposite 
 White River Junction. He was a farmer's son, and the first 
 years of his life he spent amid the scenes of the country. 
 
 * At Dover he lost a little child of ten months, the first born, to whom was 
 given the father's name, Elias.
 
 27 
 
 This gave him that inextinguishable love of nature which 
 appeared in all his talk, his sermons, and his letters. In due 
 time he went to Dartmouth College, a few miles to the north 
 of his birthplace, and got a start in his learning. He never 
 was very fond of his college, and I did not know of his 
 visiting it frequently. I think his best learning came in his 
 later years ; but he did become a close student of books and 
 read like one who knew how to use them. Yet I do not 
 think of him so much as a scholar as I do a man of fresh, 
 original thought, breaking out all the time, at the table, in 
 walks, in the study, in the vacation leisure. Electric, quick- 
 ening, pungent, overflowing, that was the quality of his tem- 
 perament, and he was one of the most stimulative of all the 
 men whom I have known. 
 
 In Hartford he will probably best be remembered as pastor. 
 I do not think he ever did his best pulpit work in that city ; 
 he did not enjoy the precipice on which he had to stand and 
 from which he had to speak, and although he loved his work 
 and his people, I think that in Dover, in Westfield, and in 
 New Britain, he did better justice to his ample gifts. But 
 as pastor he was at his best in Hartford, and moved to and 
 fro, winning confidence, love, and respect, not alone to himself 
 but to religion. He was a man formed to be loved ; and in 
 the society of the young and of the hundreds who rejoiced 
 in his simple-hearted, fresh, childlike, and affectionate "ways, 
 he found himself at home and at peace. I suppose all who 
 knew him could see that he was a very human kind of man, 
 that he had naturally a great deal of what we call sensi- 
 tiveness, but the work of grace was wrought in him to 
 an extraordinary degree, and you could not be with him 
 an hour without feeling that he was a man of truth, of 
 prayer, a man whose life was formed for inestimable services,
 
 28 
 
 and that he walked with God. So that with all your sense 
 of a good deal of human nature in him, your one surviving 
 and victorious thought would be, he was a good man, full of 
 faith and of the Holy Ghost. He was a character which you 
 did not need to analyze ; you felt what he was. He looked 
 it, he radiated it, he spoke it. He was always at one with 
 himself. His earnest voice was the index of an earnest 
 nature. His passionate outbursts were the index of a soul 
 which loathed injustice, trickery, baseness of every kind. 
 His pure countenance was the mirror of a pure heart. 
 
 Dear friends, it is a great thing that we have known and 
 loved this man. It is a good thing that for years you have 
 lived in the same city with him and under his influence. We 
 remember his presence, his manner, gesture, look, even if 
 every word he spoke has vanished from our memory. He is 
 and will be a blessing to us all. His death is one of the 
 greatest of mysteries, gone like a tree filled with half-ripe 
 fruit, stricken by lightning, -and perishing instantly in its 
 beauty and promise. The world seems poorer to-day than it 
 did when he was here, but heaven is richer, and there is one 
 more reason why we should live holier lives. 
 
 " Another hand is beckoning us, 
 Another call is given, 
 And glows once more with angel steps 
 The path that leads to heaven. 
 
 "Fold him, O Father, in Thine arms, 
 And let him henceforth be 
 A messenger of love between 
 Our human hearts and Thee. 
 
 " Still let his mild rebuking stand 
 Between us and the wrong, 
 And his dear memory serve to make 
 Our faith in goodness strong."
 
 29 
 
 My friends of this beloved and bereaved church, I need 
 not remind you of your great loss, for you know it well. I 
 need not tell his famijy what he was to them, for they 
 remember only too vividly his brightness, his tenderness, 
 his wisdom, and his devotion. You have been called upon to 
 exercise a very uncommon faith in God ; for just at the time 
 when, through the earnest and faithful labors of your minis- 
 ter, this church seemed ready to enter into a new harvest 
 season, he was not, for God took him. At no period of his 
 career was he so amply appreciated as during his New 
 Britain ministry. A whole church, a whole city surrounded 
 him with an enthusiastic love which, I need not tell you, was 
 most grateful to him. You may be glad, and you will be 
 glad for years on years, that you had this noble man with 
 you to radiate that fire which used to warm your hearts and 
 animate your lives. You may be grateful for the opportunity 
 of giving to him the welcome which you did extend to him. 
 He came among you at an hour when he specially needed 
 that loving support, and you entertained him as a man of 
 God, sent providentially to you, rich in experience, cultured 
 in mind, true in heart. Briefly he did his work with you, 
 leaving a ministry rich in goodly memories. Your children 
 loved him, your aged saints found comfort in him, you all 
 looked upon him as a man of God. He was a strong man in 
 all senses of the word, a leader in the ministry, as well as a 
 beloved pastor. His last public address, given at New 
 Haven, just on the very verge of his final illness, was 
 received as a message of rare worth, a token of a rich and 
 thoroughly furnished soul. His was a bright and glorious 
 track, luminous all the way from that New Hampshire village 
 through Dover, and Providence, and Westfield, and Hartford, 
 and New Britain, a line of varying successes, judged by
 
 30 
 
 man's standard, but shining throughout with the lustre of a 
 rare and noble character. 
 
 The Sabbath after Dr. Richardson's death the pastor of 
 the First Church of Hartford preached a sermon from 
 Acts xi, 29, " And his sepulchre is with us unto this day." 
 
 The theme of the sermon was the benefits which come to 
 men from -the remembrance of the virtuous dead. 
 
 In the conclusion of the discourse the preacher said, " I 
 have been led in this line of remark to-day, as you have all 
 along perceived, by the fact of the death, this past week, of 
 a man well known to most of you the late pastor of this 
 church. I have preferred to make the suggestions of this 
 event general, however, more than special, for good reasons. 
 
 I was not myself very well acquainted with Dr. Richard- 
 son. Up to the time of my preaching the sermon at his 
 installation here in April, 1872, I do not know as I had ever 
 met him face to face. And my opportunities for personal 
 intercourse with him since have been slight. Meantime, in all 
 your hands to-day there is the memorial address at his funeral 
 yesterday, by one of his associate pastors in this city, an 
 address which I take to be, in large measure, discriminating 
 and just, as it certainly is warm and affectionate. 
 
 Another pastor one who has had ample opportunities for 
 knowing all the facts of Dr. Richardson's life and character 
 has given public notice to all, and special notice to us, 
 that that character and life will be the theme of distinct 
 portraiture this evening. To other hands than mine, there- 
 fore, unless it be in some brief pages in that memorial vol- 
 ume of this church's history as a whole, which it is my hope 
 some time to complete I must leave any careful depicting 
 of the character and estimation of the work of our friend.
 
 Nevertheless it cannot be without its appropriateness that 
 a few words be said in conclusion, even by me. Dr. Rich- 
 ardson was the thirteenth in the line of this church's pastors 
 or teachers. He is the eleventh to have passed on beyond 
 the veil. He is the only one of all the eleven who does not 
 sleep in Hartford soil. His term of ministerial service in 
 this church was six years and eight months. He came to 
 that term of service at forty-four years of age and he gave 
 to it the best energies of which his mind and heart were 
 capable. He had previous pastoral relationships, all some- 
 what brief, all marked by zealous endeavor; and all, though 
 brief, by useful and lasting results. So also in an eminent 
 degree was his pastorate here. I know that the test of the 
 admission of members to the church is a very imperfect test 
 to apply to ministerial usefulness. I know that the period of 
 Dr. Richardson's pastorate included one of a considerable 
 revival in New England and the especial effort here of 
 Moody and Pentecost and the Tabernacle. But of the one 
 hundred and sixty persons who joined this church in the six 
 and a half years of Dr. Richardson's pastorate, certainly a 
 very considerable number must be regarded (speaking in our 
 crude way of spiritual results) as the direct fruit of his minis- 
 try. Many there are to-day in this fellowship to whom he 
 was the spiritual father. To many others here, he was 
 always an interesting and instructive teacher in religious 
 things. They received from him constant impulse to better 
 living and better serving in Christ's cause. 
 
 No man could, I suppose, have carried about with him a 
 sincerer heart ; and seldom any kinder. He never spared 
 himself if he could serve others. He was unwearied in his 
 endeavors to be of use, to be a helper, to be a comforter, 
 and to be so especially to the poor. He was pre-eminently
 
 32 
 
 democratic in his tastes and sympathies. He loved common 
 men and women, in plain garb and homely surroundings, 
 better than the rich and fashionable. Something of this 
 was instinctive with him ; something a kind of principle. 
 He had his reward. He was loved warmly in return. In 
 many and many a home in the by-streets and humble apart- 
 ments of this town his picture may be seen, and his name is 
 spoken with tender emotion. He came nearer to those 
 homes and hearts than many another man equally sincere, 
 and equally earnest possibly could, by the touch of an orig- 
 inal constitutional sympathy with hard and homely phases of 
 human life. 
 
 And so he had here what must be accounted by the sever- 
 est of tests a successful ministry: 
 
 Yet it is not wrong to say that something in his original 
 make and in the historic make of this church, prevented the 
 full realization here of such a pastoral relation as he was 
 capable of. He could have surroundings more suited to his 
 happiness and his usefulness. And God gave them to him. 
 His last pastorate was his happiest pastorate. I do not 
 know that he won more souls to Christ in New Britain than 
 in Hartford, or than he had done in Dover or Westfield. 
 But there was his happiest home. Something in the more 
 responsive, perhaps less self-conscious, temperament of that 
 society, gave him an access and satisfaction, to a certain 
 extent lacking here. Over that grave, on which the flowers 
 yet lie unwithered, I may say frankly that I do not think 
 the responsibility was wholly his (though his, doubtless, 
 owing to constitutional limitations, in part) that this pasto- 
 rale was not the fully happy one it might have been. Per- 
 haps he lived a good deal a stranger, after all, among you. 
 Perhaps the man who preached to your households, who
 
 33 
 
 baptized your children and buried your dead, was not the 
 man you gave much sense of fellowship to, nevertheless. 
 
 But God gave that to him. It makes me glad at heart to 
 think how warm and general and sincere is the mourning in 
 our neighbor town to-day, over the man whom they will see 
 no more. Glad at heart, I say, for he had a rather checkered 
 life ; with too many dark spots on the board ; but he died as 
 any man might pray God to die, in the full tide of happy 
 usefulness and honor. 
 
 And so the thirteenth pastor of this long succession has 
 gone onward, to meet the waiting company of his predeces- 
 sors and the great fellowship of the flock they have in their 
 generations tended and led toward the better country. 
 Among those ten predecessors who have entered that 
 country before him, there were doubtless several who were 
 abler men, more powerful preachers, of larger resources, 
 more controlling will and heavier impressing personality. 
 But I doubt if there were among them all a man of truer- 
 hearted purpose to live to God's honor and man's good, than 
 he who follows last in that company. 
 
 He had not a more choleric temper than Hooker, nay, per- 
 haps than Hawes, and he repented as sincerely as did those 
 good men, if at any time he showed a hasty spirit. More 
 than some of his predecessors he carried a hampering weight 
 in a certain over-sensitiveness to the opinions of others, 
 which to some extent embarassed him and put him at a dis- 
 advantage. 
 
 But spite of whatever infirmities of human nature may 
 sometimes have been recognized in him, I do not believe 
 that the surviving congregations of any of the ten ministers 
 who have preached to the First Church of Hartford were 
 more sure that their dead pastor had gone to Heaven as 
 5
 
 34 
 
 "his own place," the only place he could go to, than you are 
 to-day. 
 
 Let us leave him there in their company, and in His com- 
 pany who brought them all there, as the dying first one of 
 them all said, "not by merit but by mercy." 
 
 Their memories and their sepulchres abide. Let us thank 
 God for what He gave to this church through any of them. 
 And let the recollection that they have gone before us 
 strengthen our hearts, till we join the society of those who 
 being made "just" here, are made "perfect" yonder. 
 
 As a token of the esteem in which Dr. Richardson was 
 held, the following resolutions and minutes are appended : 
 
 SOUTH CHURCH, NEW BRITAIN. 
 
 "WHEREAS God, in His infinite wisdom, has removed by death 
 
 the pastor of our sister church, Rev. E. H. Richardson, D.D., 
 
 therefore 
 
 Resolved, That while we remember with gratitude the pure 
 character, earnest life, and eminent usefulness of Dr. Richardson, 
 and recognize our own great loss as a church, to which he has 
 occasionally ministered, and as members of the community in 
 which he lived, we especially express our heartfelt sympathy with 
 the church of which he was pastor, and pray that this seemingly irre- 
 parable loss may be attended by rich spiritual blessings from the 
 great Head of the Church. 
 
 Resolved, That we desire to express our profound sympathy 
 with the afflicted family in their bereavement, and commend each 
 member to the Divine Being who was the trust of the deceased, 
 and who is the widow's God and a father to the fatherless." 
 
 METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW BRITAIN. 
 
 " The pastor and official board of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, New Britain, desire to express for themselves, and in 
 behalf of the entire congregation, their profound sorrow on 
 account of the death of Rev. E. H. Richardson, D.D.
 
 35 
 
 His eminent Christian character and distinguished abilities 
 were the common inheritance and pride of all the churches of the 
 city. 
 
 Stricken down in the midst his years, and in the maturity of 
 his influence, the entire community suffers a most painful loss. 
 
 While \ve bow in humble submission to the divine will, we 
 extend our prayerful sympathies to his deeply bereaved family 
 and to the afflicted church of which he was the honored and 
 beloved pastor." 
 
 CENTRAL CONFERENCE. 
 
 MERIDEN, Oct. 10, 1883. 
 
 Whereas, since our last meeting, our Heavenly Father, in his 
 infinite wisdom, has removed by death the pastor of one of the 
 churches here represented, this Conference adopts the following 
 minute as an expression of its regard for the deceased, and of its 
 sympathy with the bereaved church and afflicted family: 
 
 Rev. Elias H. Richardson, D.D., late pastor of the First Church 
 of Christ, New Britain, passed from his earthly labors to his 
 heavenly rest, June 27, 1883, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and 
 the thirtieth of his public ministry. 
 
 Manly and conscientious as a Christian citizen, earnest and 
 faithful as a preacher, and tender and loving as a pastor, he was 
 instrumental, in God's hands, of building up and strengthening 
 the churches to which he successively ministered, and of shedding 
 a brightening light in the communities in which he lived. He 
 brought to his work a richness of spiritual power, and a loving 
 interest in the welfare of those about him, that made his example 
 and teachings a blessing to the church and the world. 
 
 In his death, this Conference loses a much esteemed and valued 
 member, whose sincere and earnest words have ever commanded 
 attention, and whose memory will be cherished with affection and 
 gratitude. 
 
 To the bereaved church of which he was the beloved pastor, 
 and to the afflicted family of the deceased, this Conference ten- 
 ders its sympathy, praying the great Head of the Church to bring 
 to each all needed comfort and rich spiritual blessings. 
 
 The following letter from the church at Dover, of which 
 Dr. Richardson was pastor twenty years ago, will speak for
 
 36 
 
 itself. It is certainly a remarkable tribute to a pastor's 
 fidelity that such testimony was given so long after the 
 pastoral relation terminated. It may be added that provision 
 was made by the same church for procuring a faithful crayon 
 likeness of their former pastor. 
 
 DOVER, N. H., July 5, 1883. 
 MY DEAR MRS. RICHARDSON : 
 
 You have already, through friends here, been made acquainted 
 with the deep grief felt by the people of Dover, first at the severe 
 illness of your husband, and later by the news of his sudden death. 
 Before this reaches you, you will have learned that last Sabbath 
 the pulpit of our church was draped, and that Prof. Churchill, 
 who occupied it, made touching allusions to your husband's 
 decease in the long prayer, and selected for the second hymn a 
 memorial one. The whole congregation, which was large, was in 
 deepest sympathy with the impressive services. 
 
 At our Tuesday evening weekly meeting allusion was made to 
 your husband's faithful ministry with us by all that took part, and 
 it was voted, all rising, that an expression of our affection for 
 your husband, and of our sincere sympathy for you and your 
 family in this hour of sorest trial, should be sent to you. 
 
 This painful duty was assigned to me. Would that I could 
 speak as I would like, and as I feel I ought, adequately to express 
 the feelings of our people. But my words are not necessary to 
 make you understand all this. Others have already told you 
 before now how our hearts bleed. Affection that outlives twenty 
 years must be real. I know of no one of the worthy men who 
 have filled this pulpit that had a warmer hold on the affections of 
 this people, and whose name was more frequently and lovingly 
 mentioned than was your husband's. Memory will ever hold his 
 faithful ministry here imperishable. 
 
 With one heart would we all commend you and yours to the 
 tender care of the Great Head of the Church, and, as far as 
 human sympathy can sustain, would we join the many friends you 
 have in all the places where your husband was called to labor. 
 
 With sincere sympathy for you and yours, believe me, 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 JAS. H. WHEELER.
 
 37 
 
 The following preamble and resolutions were adopted by 
 the New Britain Ministers' Meeting, Monday, Sept. 24, 1883, 
 the meeting being composed of the Congregational, Method- 
 ist, and Baptist clergymen of the city and vicinity : 
 
 Whereas, since our last meeting one of our number, Rev. Dr. 
 E. H. Richardson, Pastor of the Center Church, has been removed 
 by death, it is our pleasure to place on record our high apprecia- 
 tion of his talents and genuine ability as a Christian minister. 
 His earnest enthusiasm, his pure, godly life, his fearless presenta- 
 tion of God's truth, made him a minister of God, honored, 
 respected, and beloved by all. 
 
 As brethren in the ministry, associated with him in Christian 
 work, we learned to respect and love him, and we deeply regret 
 his removal so suddenly from the church which loved him, and 
 from this community which he served so faithfully, both as a citi- 
 zen and a minister of Christ. 
 
 The following testimonial was offered by the Connecticut 
 Congregational Club, of which Dr. Richardson was an hon- 
 ored member, at its meeting December i8th: 
 
 God having removed from us by death our beloved brother, 
 Rev. Elias H. Richardson, D.D., a member of this Club, we 
 desire to put on record the following memorial : 
 
 1. He was a faithful student of God's word and of whatever 
 would throw light upon it; a vigorous and conscientious thinker; 
 a careful but progressive theologian, studying devoutly the works 
 of the great Christian thinkers of the past, and not less devoutly 
 looking for whatever new light may break forth from the Gospel 
 in the present. He was an energetic and effective preacher ; a 
 winner of souls whose whole intense nature, fired by grace, was 
 in the work of saving men and glorifying Christ ; an humble 
 Christian who drank deep, and as the years passed by, ever deeper 
 draughts from the fountain of spiritual life. We rank him high 
 among the ministers of his generation. We cherish his memory 
 with gratitude and mourn the loss of a brother respected and 
 beloved. 
 
 2. The Church of which he was last pastor have lost, in the 
 very prime of his usefulness, this wise and faithful leader, this man
 
 of large heart and large sympathies. It would be impossible to 
 say whether his love for them or their love for him was greater. 
 His last pastorate, he was wont to say, was his happiest, and his 
 last work was probably his best and most effective. His last 
 months were months of very rapid growth in likeness to his Lord. 
 Those who were familiar with him then felt that God was fitting 
 him for more effective service on earth. But we must bow rever- 
 ently before the majesty of that wisdom and love which decreed 
 that this should be his preparation for the higher service of Heaven. 
 3. The family who have suffered in this sore bereavement are 
 assured of our warmest sympathy. We commend them to Him 
 who has declared and shown himself to be the God of the widow 
 and the fatherless.
 
 A 000029212 8