LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 V ^ 
 
 THE FAMILY OF REV. DR. GEORGE MOOAR 
 
 Class 
 
. '' ffl , .- 
 
 
 . '.-., ' 
 

MEMORIAL 
 
 it 
 
 SAMUEL HARVEY TAYLOR 
 
 COMPILED BY HIS LAST CLASS. 
 
 ANDOVER: 
 
 WARREN F. DRAPER. 
 1871. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
 
 WARREN F. DRAPER, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 Rand, A v>ry, &? Frye, Printers, Boston. 
 
TO 
 
 MRS. S. H. TAYLOR, 
 
 OUR CONSTANT FRIEND, 
 
 IS INSCRIBED. 
 
 12307? 
 
RESOLUTION. 
 
 AT a meeting, of the SENIOR CLASS in PHILLIPS ACADEMY, held 
 Feb. 27, 1871, the following resolution was unanimously adopted : 
 
 WHEREAS, We wish to render an humble tribute to our devoted 
 Instructor, the late Dr. S. H. TAYLOR ; 
 
 RESOLVED, That a Committee of five be appointed to confer with 
 the friends of the deceased, and, if in accordance with their wishes, to 
 publish a Memorial Volume. 
 
 H. S. VAN DUZER, 1 
 
 C. F. CUTTER, 
 
 CHARLES ISHAM, [ Committee. 
 
 C. F. THWING, 
 
 F. C. S. BARTLETT, j 
 

CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR EDWARDS A. PARK . . . 9 
 
 II. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE SCRIPTURES, READ BY PROFESSOR JOHN 
 
 L. TAYLOR 55 
 
 III. 
 SERMON BY PROFESSOR J. W. CHURCHILL . . . .61 
 
 N 
 
 IV. 
 APPENDIX 105 
 
 RESOLUTIONS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMY, AND BY THE 
 
 ALUMNI. 
 
 NOTE A. CIRCUMSTANCES OF DR. TAYLOR'S DEATH. 
 NOTE B. REMINISCENCES OF A PUPIL OF DR. TAYLOR. 
 NOTE C. ACCOUNT OF THE FUNERAL SERVICES. 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 
 
 BY PROF. EDWARDS A. PARK. 
 
 IT is told of Saladin, the champion of Is- 
 lam ism, that after he had retaken the Holy 
 City; subjugated numerous fortresses in Syria, 
 Arabia, Persia, and Mesopotamia; performed 
 so many exploits in the crusades as to be 
 designated " the Great " he was seized with a 
 disorder which threatened to wither up at once 
 all his garlands of victory. When he saw that 
 death was inevitable, he called his herald who 
 used to carry his banner before him, took his 
 lance which had so often been shaken in 
 
 NOTE. This address was delivered on the 2d of February, 1871, 
 in the large hall of Phillips Academy. As the author was absent from 
 Andover on the sabbath of Dr. Taylor's decease, Jan. 29, and as 
 he could not begin to write the address until the following Tuesday, 
 and was obliged to deliver it on the next Thursday, he has added a 
 few sentences which he had not time to insert in the original manu- 
 script. 
 
10 
 
 battle, tied his shroud to the top of his lance, 
 and then said to the herald, u Go unfurl this 
 shroud in the camp. It is the flag of the day. 
 Wave it in the air, and proclaim, ' This is all 
 that remains of Saladin the Great, the con- 
 queror, the king of the empire ; all that 
 remains of all his glory!" But, when a good 
 man dies, we cannot say that all which remains 
 of him is the coffin and the shroud. He has 
 lived in his thoughts and deeds ; he still lives 
 in the remembrance of them. They are like 
 seeds planted by the water-courses : they spring 
 up, and bear fruit ; and he lives in their peren- 
 nial life. 
 
 When George Whitefield died, he did not 
 pass away from among men : he lived in 
 those of his survivors whose character he had 
 improved. He preached one sermon in the 
 native town of the friend who has just left us ; 
 and one of our friend's ancestors was morally 
 transformed by the instrumentality of that 
 sermon. That ancestor exerted a marked 
 influence on the mother of Dr. Taylor, and 
 she exerted an obvious influence on him : so 
 that there is one important sense in which 
 
1 1 
 
 George Whitefield has been living through the 
 last three and thirty years in Phillips Academy. 
 There is more than one important sense in 
 which he that believeth in Christ shall never 
 die. 
 
 In the latter part of "the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, in consequence of the persecutions of the 
 Covenanters, a company of devout Scotchmen 
 left their homes for the north of Ireland. In 
 the year 1719, sixteen families of these devoted 
 pioneers came to this land, and established 
 themselves in the old township of London- 
 derry, New Hampshire. During that and the 
 following year, more than four times their 
 number joined them in the new colony. Mr. 
 Horace Greeley, one of their descendants, says, 
 " They were eminently men of conviction. 
 They saw clearly, they reasoned fearlessly, and 
 they did not hesitate to follow wherever truth 
 led the way. I presume," he adds, " more 
 teachers now living trace their descent to the 
 Scotch-Irish pioneers of Londonderry than to 
 an equal number anywhere else." 1 One of 
 
 1 The hearty and life-long interest which Dr. Taylor cherished in his 
 native town was constantly strengthened by the history of the men who 
 
12 
 
 these Londonderry emigrants was Matthew 
 Taylor. He held the title-deed of his farm 
 from Lieutenant-Governor John Wentworth ; 
 and that farm had been previously owned by 
 John Leverett, Governor of Massachusetts 
 Colony. On that ancestral land, now within 
 the township of Derry, lived and died Mat- 
 descended from its first settlers. Among the teachers thus descended 
 are Presidents McKeen of Bowdoin, and Aiken of Union College ; 
 Professors Jarvis Gregg, W. A. Packard ; Joseph McKeen, Rev. 
 James Means. Among the clergymen are Rev. David McGregor, son 
 of the first pastor of the town (Rev. James McGregor), and ancestor 
 of a large and distinguished family ; Rev. Samuel Taggart of Coleraine, 
 Massachusetts ; Rev James Miltimore of Newburyport ; Rev. Rufus 
 Anderson of Wenham, " who at the close of his life was preparing an 
 historical work on Modern Missions to the Heathen," and whose son, 
 Rev. Dr. Rufus Anderson of Boston, is the historian of the missions 
 under the care of the A. B. C. F. M. ; Rev. Silas McKeen of Brad- 
 ford, Vermont ; Rev. Dr. Morrison ; Rev. James T. McCollom. 
 Among the jurists and statesmen are John Bell, member of the Pro- 
 vincial Congress ; John and Samuel Bell, both governors of New 
 Hampshire ; Judge Jeremiah Smith. Among the military men are Gen- 
 eral George Reid and General John Stark. Of the Londonderry immi- 
 grants and their posterity who have attained distinction in other States 
 the number is not known ; but, " of those who have become eminent 
 in New Hampshire, six have been governors of the State ; nine have 
 been members of Congress.; five, judges of the Supreme Court ; two, 
 members of the Provincial Congress ; and one of these was a signer 
 of the Declaration of Independence." REV. E. L. PARKER : History 
 of Londonderry. 
 
13 
 
 thew Taylor. There were born his children, 
 and many of his children's children. There 
 Samuel Harvey Taylor, a descendant of the 
 fourth generation from Matthew, was born, on 
 the 3d of October, I8O7. 1 His father, Cap- 
 tain James Taylor, was a man of sterling 
 integrity and high Christian principle. He 
 was for a long time a deacon of the church in 
 Derry, as his son has been for a long time a 
 deacon of the church on this hill. He was 
 obliged to be absent from home during a large 
 part of Samuel Harvey's childhood and youth ; 
 and therefore, even at the age of eight years, 
 our lamented friend was called to discharge a 
 
 1 The original settlers of Londonderry, New Hampshire, emigrated 
 from the city or the neighborhood of Londonderry in Ireland. When 
 that city was besieged in 1688 by the troops of Lord Antrim, defend- 
 ing the cause of James against William, Prince of Orange, and when 
 some of these troops approached the city gate, and demanded that it 
 be opened, thirteen young men, fearing that the mayor and some of 
 the citizens would be treasonable, " rushed to the main guard, seized 
 the keys, after a slight opposition, drew up the bridge, and locked the 
 gate just as the soldiers were about to enter " ( Rev. E. L. Parker's 
 " History of Londonderry, " pp. 10, 1 1). One of these young men was 
 named Samuel Harvey. This fact suggested the Christian name of 
 Dr. Taylor, one of whose maternal ancestors had the maiden name of 
 Harvey, and perhaps belonged to the family of the resolute young 
 hero of Londonderry. 
 
series of duties which are not ordinarily 
 expected of early boyhood. At the age of 
 fourteen years, the conduct of two extensive 
 farms was, in large measure, committed to him. 
 He superintended the workmen, he mingled in 
 their labors, and learned thus early in life the 
 principles of secular business, the art of gov- 
 ernment, and the details of hard work. Even 
 then his industry and energy qualified him to 
 exact the same traits from the men whom he 
 employed. His example justified his tones of 
 command ; and his tones were singularly ef- 
 fectual. 
 
 He who understands one thing knows many 
 others ; and, by learning the processes of agri- 
 culture and the methods of dealing with busi- 
 ness-men, our friend prepared himself for the 
 large variety of miscellaneous affairs which he 
 was called to manage in various departments of 
 life. Until the age of eighteen, he intended 
 and expected to cultivate his ancestral acres. He 
 had been accustomed to rise often at three 
 o'clock in the morning, and to labor with unre- 
 mitted diligence through the day, and had 
 gained a hardihood of constitution which prom- 
 
15 
 
 ised a long life of manual toil. It did give him 
 a life singularly free from physical pain. But, 
 in consequence of being thrown from a wagon, 
 he lost, in some degree, his power of physical 
 endurance ; and he decided to pursue a literary 
 life. In his mature age^, whenever he passed 
 the scene of this accident, he was accustomed 
 to say, " Here I began my education." That 
 one fall from a wagon has resulted in his affect- 
 ing the character of six thousand pupils. 
 
 From his early childhood he had manifested 
 a passion for books ; and it was now with in- 
 tense delight that he began to prepare himself 
 for college. He entered Pinkerton Academy, 
 in his native town, and studied with his char- 
 acteristic vehemence. Being unwilling to lose 
 the time which that academy devoted to a va- 
 cation, he spent one vacation, at least, in At- 
 kinson Academy ; and rejoined the school of 
 his native town at the commencement of the 
 new term. Thus at the beginning, as through 
 the progress, of his literary life, he kept himself 
 under discipline. He prepared himself to enter 
 the sophomore class of Dartmouth College, 
 after only two years of academic study. The 
 
i6 
 
 winter vacations of his college-life he spent in 
 teaching district schools. Still he was graduat- 
 ed with honor in the class of 1832.' 
 
 While at Hanover, he began his distinctively 
 religious life. When he entered the college, he 
 intended to be a physician ; when he left it, he 
 intended to be a minister of the gospel. He 
 came at once to Andover, and entered the 
 Theological Seminary in the autumn of 1832. 
 Professor Stuart and Dr. Edward Robinson 
 often expressed their admiration of his zeal 
 and accuracy in his Hebrew and Greek studies. 
 Dr. Woods was pleased with his patient thought 
 and conservative tendencies ; for, throughout 
 his life, Dr. Taylor cherished the principles and 
 habits of conservatism. As a theological stu- 
 dent, he was animated with a missionary spirit; 
 and he earnestly deliberated on the question of 
 devoting his life to the foreign service. 
 
 He had acquired such a reputation as a 
 
 1 Rev. Dr. Noyes, professor in Dartmouth College, where he was a 
 classmate of Mr. Taylor in 1829-32, has made valuable suggestions 
 to the writer in regard to the worth of his associate, and says, " The 
 friends of his early years who survive him will cherish his memory 
 with the warmest affection. His name will long be associated with this 
 college as one of the most useful and honored of her sons." 
 
scholar and a teacher, that Mr. Osgood John- 
 son, then the accomplished principal of Phillips 
 Academy, and a man of the rarest gifts and 
 graces, was importunate in his solicitations 
 that Mr. Taylor would become an assistant in 
 the school. In 1834, our friend yielded to 
 the request of Mr. Johnson. He was so em- 
 inently successful in his work, that, after he 
 had spent more than a year in it, he was 
 invited to take the permanent office of as- 
 sistant principal in the academy. He de- 
 clined the invitation. His pupils met in a 
 field or in a grove, and passed a unanimous 
 vote urging the trustees to renew their invi- 
 tation, and urging him to accept it ; but he in- 
 sisted on declining it, and soon entered on a 
 tutorship at Dartmouth College, He remained 
 in this office through the collegiate year of 
 1836 and 1837. He had been "approbated" 
 to preach the gospel ; and, while laboring at the 
 college during the week, he was accustomed to 
 labor in some pulpit on the sabbath. He was 
 then an acceptable preacher, and was urged to 
 take the pastorate of an important church in 
 New Hampshire. His tutorship also was emi- 
 
i8 
 
 nently successful. Once he invited members 
 of his class to meet him for the purpose of en- 
 gaging in a voluntary study of the Greek 
 preposition. He did not expect that more than 
 ten or twelve would let their zeal for the clas- 
 sics carry them beyond the requisitions of 
 college-law. He was surprised to find that 
 nearly the whole class accepted his invitation ; 
 and, after preparing himself for his regular ex- 
 ercises, he spent four hours every day in pre- 
 paring himself for this voluntary exercise, 
 which was made interesting to his pupils by his 
 enthusiasm in it. Amid all these miscellaneous 
 duties of his tutorship at Hanover, he still 
 prosecuted his theological studies ; spent his 
 winter vacation at Andover as a member of the 
 senior class in the seminary ; received the 
 regular diploma in the autumn of 1837 ; and in 
 the same autumn, having previously declined 
 an invitation to teach in a New-England city, 
 he commenced his duties as the principal of 
 Phillips Academy. 
 
 The first principal of this academy was Dr. 
 Eliphalet Pearson ; the fourth principal was 
 Dr. John Adams : both of them were highly 
 
19 
 
 distinguished men, and both strict disciplinari- 
 ans. They introduced a rigid government as 
 a characteristic of the school ; and, when the 
 trustees appointed Mr. Taylor as principal, 
 they intended and expected that he would be 
 faithful to the traditions of the office. He was 
 constitutionally fitted for a disciplinarian. He 
 had an instinct of government. This had been 
 strengthend in his boyhood. All men are not 
 qualified for the same method of action. Every 
 man must pursue that method for which God 
 has adapted him. " Let the earth bring forth the 
 herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree 
 yielding fruit after his kind" was the original 
 law of Nature. The oak was not to bear roses, 
 and the eglantine was not to send forth the 
 gnarled branches of the oak. Professor Pat- 
 terson, now a senator at Washington, one of 
 the descendants of the Londonderry colonists, 
 says, " Profound convictions, an inflexible will, 
 and strong sensibilities, are the natural inherit- 
 ance of our people." Dr. Taylor shared largely 
 in this inheritance. He had a stern conscience, 
 a keen sense of duty, a deep regard for obliga- 
 tion. It was his firm belief that men in the 
 
20 
 
 4 
 
 learned professions would accomplish more 
 than they now do, if they were more regular in 
 their habits of study, if they had their fixed 
 hours for intellectual toil : he therefore deemed 
 it his duty to insist on strict regularity in his 
 school. The future usefulness of his pupils 
 required it. He believed that one of the dan- 
 gers to which this democratic land lies exposed 
 is a disrespect for law : he therefore believed 
 that he was performing an act of kindness to 
 his pupils when he was accustoming them to 
 obey. He believed, that, if they would yield 
 their wills to the authority of a school, they 
 would more easily yield their individual inter- 
 ests to the civil government, and would be 
 more apt to prostrate themselves before the In- 
 finite Ruler and Sovereign. He believed that 
 indolence is not only a besetting sin of men, 
 but the parent of a numerous progeny of other 
 sins : he regarded himself, therefore, as per- 
 forming an act of kindness for his scholars, 
 whenever he broke up their habits of idleness. 
 He loved labor; he had inured himself to it; 
 he required of others no harder tasks than he 
 had performed himself. He was apt to wonder 
 
21 
 
 that any of his pupils did not love what he 
 loved, and was consequently more willing to 
 require by law those duties, which, when habit- 
 ual, would be a source of delight. Being 
 himself enamoured of study, he was surprised 
 when any of his pupils had not a similar pas- 
 sion for science and literature; he was thus the 
 more willing to raise the strong arm of author- 
 ity, and to exact those habits of thought and 
 reading which form the dignity of manhood 
 and the solace of old age : he was conscien- 
 tious in the belief that classical learning is 
 important for the welfare of our republic ; that 
 our statesmen should be imbued with a love 
 for the great writers of antiquity ; that our 
 popular literature should be permeated with 
 the elegance and the grace which come from 
 intimate communion with the sages and the 
 poets of Greece and Rome. He therefore be- 
 lieved that he was discharging the duties of a 
 good citizen and a patriot, when he was holding 
 up a high standard of classical learning, and 
 urging young men up to that standard, himself 
 leading the way in the laborious ascent, and 
 demanding that his pupils follow him. These 
 
22 
 
 were the principles on which he began and 
 continued and ended his course as the head 
 master of Phillips Academy. 
 
 It need not, as it cannot, be said that he was 
 immaculate in following out these principles. 
 With all his dignity and authority he was a 
 modest man. 1 He did not claim to be perfect, 
 he only cherished the humble but assured trust 
 that the main principles of his government were 
 in accordance with the spirit of good citizenship, 
 sound learning, and rational piety. His self- 
 distrust was not always understood. It has 
 been noticed, that a man of moral courage 
 sometimes assumes an authoritative manner in 
 order to resist or conceal his constitutional 
 diffidence. Dr. Taylor has been known to 
 speak a word of command with great reluc- 
 tance, and to speak it in a tone more manda- 
 tory than he would have employed if he had 
 not desired to overcome his native bashfulness. 
 
 It need not, as it cannot, be said that he had 
 all the qualifications of an eminent teacher. 
 
 1 " I have great reason to condemn myself that I have done so little 
 to secure the great end for which I was created." This is a specimen 
 of the self-depreciating remarks with which his private letters abound. 
 
23 
 
 He counted not himself to have apprehended, 
 but, until the last day of his life, he pressed 
 forward that he might attain, the completeness 
 for the want of which he sighed. It is enough 
 to say that he had some remarkable qualifica- 
 tions for a good instructor. Let us meditate 
 on a few of them. 
 
 He united accuracy in the details of classical 
 literature with an enthusiasm in its general 
 spirit. Accuracy is essential to the success of 
 a teacher, but does not insure it. Our friend 
 was correct in the minutiae of the Latin and 
 Greek languages. In his view, no error was 
 trivial. With scrupulous care he exposed the 
 slightest mistake of a pupil. He was not, 
 however, so engrossed in looking at the trees, 
 that he failed to see the grove. 
 
 He did find a pleasure in interpreting the 
 Greek particles. When he first studied the 
 Greek accents, he was transported with delight, 
 as if he had been reading a romance ; but he 
 also looked beyond the points and the declen- 
 sions and the various readings. It was the 
 thought, the principle, the theory, of the great 
 authors, it was the living sentiment as well 
 
24 
 
 as the "winged words" of Homer, it was the 
 strong sense as well as the compressed diction 
 of Sallust, that aroused him. He was interest- 
 ed in the historical genius of Xenophon ; he 
 caught the poetic fire of Homer ; his memory 
 was replete with sound and terse apothegms 
 from Livy and Tacitus ; he quoted them with 
 fervor on fit occasions ; and he was at home 
 amid the mountains and the groves and the 
 streams of Greece and Italy. He was not wild 
 in his classical enthusiasm ; for he had too much 
 of scholarly accuracy to be wild. He was not 
 coldly correct in his interpretations ; for he had 
 too much enthusiasm to be critically dull. 
 
 He also combined, in an uncommon degree, 
 a quickness of perception with a solidity of 
 judgment. His rapidity of thought may have 
 been the result of his hard work, and his famil- 
 iarity with his lessons; but it surprised his 
 pupils. The celerity with which he detected an 
 error, analyzed a sentence, compared different 
 constructions, appeared magical. Men of this 
 rapid thought are apt to err. They make more 
 mistakes than other men, because they form 
 more opinions than others. But, while our friend 
 
was rapid, he was also cautious. Perhaps he 
 was as much distinguished for prudence as for 
 quickness. Naturally self-distrustful, he did 
 not choose to express an opinion until he had 
 carefully examined it. Hence his judgment 
 was respected by his pupils : it was law. 
 
 He united a singular devotion to classical 
 literature with a general interest in scholarly 
 pursuits and the affairs of life. By no means 
 was he a mere student of the Latin and Greek 
 languages. He was not ill acquainted with 
 theology. He was not ill versed in the history 
 of doctrine. He was not a stranger to the 
 theories of political economy and international 
 law. He had formed his opinions on English, 
 French, and German history. He had read 
 with great care the poems of Dante, the writ- 
 ings of Burke, the best works on art. He was 
 not a poor critic of sculpture or painting or 
 music ; of all which he was a loving student. 
 He knew well the history of his native land. 
 He was familiar with the local annals of his 
 native State. He understood the policy of his 
 adopted Commonwealth. He had a fresh in- 
 terest in the affairs of this town. He knew 
 
26 
 
 well the dangers such as have been expe- 
 rienced in Gottingen, Halle, Jena of a collis- 
 ion between the pupils of a large school and the 
 surrounding community. During the last 
 thirty-three years, he has devoted much of his 
 practical wisdom to the preventing of these 
 collisions, to the interweaving of the sympa- 
 thies of the school with the sympathies of the 
 town, to the convincing of the people that 
 Phillips Academy was one means of giving to 
 Andover that " good name which is rather to 
 be chosen than great riches." 
 
 Indeed, the multifariousness of his talents 
 for mingling with different classes in the com- 
 munity was one of his prominent distinctions. 
 While there are some who associate his 
 name with strict government, others associate 
 it with generous friendship and good cheer. 
 During the last quarter of a century, there has 
 not been in his native town a festival or cele- 
 bration which would not have seemed incom- 
 plete if he had not presided over it, or been a 
 prominent actor in it. The school-children of 
 that beautiful town were glad when they saw 
 him ; for he was a tender friend to them. I 
 
27 
 
 have been with him when he was appraising 
 an estate, and he seemed to be in a wonted 
 employment. I have been with him when he 
 was conversing with a widow who had but a 
 handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a 
 cruse, and he conversed as if his business had 
 been to relieve the timid. I have been with 
 him when he was conversing with the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and he appeared 
 well fitted to be a counsellor of the Magistrate. 
 The foreman and the journeymen of the print- 
 ing-office looked up to him as a good adviser ; 
 and the conductors on the railroads sat down 
 with him as their friend. During the last 
 thirty years there has been on this hill scarcely 
 a single funeral which he has not superintended. 
 This many-sided interest in the concerns of 
 life gave to a large community a firm confi- 
 dence in him. This public confidence was 
 communicated to his pupils. They caught the 
 spirit of the community. The vast majority 
 of them believed in him. 
 
 Dr. Taylor combined a clear perception of 
 truth with a personal and growing interest in 
 it. He who would instruct others must him- 
 
28 
 
 self understand what he would impart; must 
 not only know the truth, but know that he 
 knows it ; must not only be confident, but pro- 
 gressive. He who ceases to learn ceases to 
 teach. Every day, Dr. Taylor studied the les- 
 son on which he. criticised his pupils. He 
 read the new commentaries, German and Eng- 
 lish ; and, when he came before his class, he 
 was not only familiar with their lesson, but 
 some of his ideas on it were new and fresh to 
 himself. It was obvious that he loved the 
 Greek verb ; that he felt a personal interest in 
 the Greek syntax. An offence against the 
 laws of the Latin language seemed to be a per- 
 sonal injury to himself; and, on the other 
 hand, he was wont to speak as if he felt a per- 
 sonal gratitude to some of his pupils for their 
 neat or exact renderings of the classics. 
 
 The scene in his recitation-room reminded 
 one of a torrent rushing onward to the sea; 
 one wave not waiting for another, but every 
 wave hastening forward as if instinct with life. 
 Every mind was on the alert. Those who 
 were naturally quick learned to be accurate 
 before him ; those who were naturally slow 
 
29 
 
 spurred themselves onward before him. He 
 not only had a knowledge of his theme, and 
 an interest in it, but a knowledge of his pupils, 
 and an interest in them. He well understood 
 the nature of young men : he divined their 
 thoughts ; his insight of their character ap- 
 peared at times mysterious ; he knew how to 
 incite and embolden them. He derived a 
 fresh esteem for them from the very fact that 
 they could be incited to study, and emboldened 
 to press through obstacles. 1 
 
 Dr. Taylor combined in a peculiar degree 
 the factitious with the natural qualifications 
 for a teacher. His stalwart person, sonorous 
 voice, strong emphasis, gave him one kind of 
 power. His name had become a symbol of 
 trustworthiness; and, as success is the means 
 of succeeding, his reputation gave him another 
 kind of power, a kind which it will require 
 years for another man to gain. His example 
 of punctuality, energy, and enterprise (his 
 study-lamp regularly burning at six o'clock of 
 
 1 Here the author was intending to read a letter which he had 
 requested one of Dr. Taylor's pupils to write ; but he could not read it 
 because it was given him at too late an hour. See Appendix, Note B. 
 
a winter's morning, and nine o'clock of an 
 evening), gave a distinct force to his admoni- 
 tions. To all these requisites, he added a pas- 
 sion for training the youthful mind. He was 
 an educator by nature. He was in his element 
 when his pupils were before him, and his words 
 were summoning them to exertion with a kind 
 of talismanic force. He had chosen the right 
 profession for himself; here was his wisdom : 
 he was exerting his powers in the way for 
 which they were signally adapted ; here was 
 his faithfulness to himself and to his Maker. 
 His love of teaching young men proved that 
 he was called of God to the office ; and his con- 
 scientious diligence in his work proved that he 
 heard and obeyed the Master's voice. 
 
 I do not overlook the fact, that, for nearly 
 a hundred years, objections have been urged 
 against the rigor of discipline maintained in 
 Phillips Academy. In adhering to the tradi- 
 tions of the school, it was to be expected that 
 Dr. Taylor would sometimes err in supposing 
 that other young men could do with hard toil 
 what he had done so resolutely. But, while 
 critics repeat some of his reproving words, 
 
they are apt to forget that he was a very model 
 of patience in helping dull scholars if they 
 were industrious ; a very model of persever- 
 ance in explaining the text, and repeating his 
 explanations, until he" made it clear to obtuse 
 minds, if they meant well. He had a rever- 
 ence for good intentions. He loved the ster- 
 ling virtues of his pupils. He prized their 
 moral excellence more than their mental 
 acumen. Hundreds of these pupils confess 
 that he started them in their career of useful- 
 ness, breathed courage into them if they were 
 timorous ; and, when he refused to do their 
 work for them, he gave them a richer benefit 
 in stimulating them to do their own work for 
 themselves. He valued his pupils, not so much 
 for what they knew, as for what they could and 
 would learn. He did not love to crowd their 
 memory with thoughts, so much as to enable 
 them to think. He was careful not to overload 
 their minds, and equally careful to develop 
 them. His aim was not to give them knowl- 
 edge, but to qualify them for getting it. 
 
 He ascertained in some unaccountable way 
 the circumstances of his pupils. He knew 
 
32 
 
 their fears and their sufferings. He interested 
 himself in behalf of the poor and the sick; 
 he provided reliefs for them. He dispensed 
 charities with singular prudence. He did not 
 let his pupils know when these charities came 
 from himself. He did not tell his left hand 
 what his right hand did. He waited patiently 
 for the sentence : " Inasmuch as thou hast 
 done it unto one of the least of these my 
 brethren, thou hast done it unto me." 
 
 Of his six thousand pupils, it cannot be ex- 
 pected that all would love him. He had a posi- 
 tive character. He was a positive character. 
 He spoke positive words : he did positive deeds. 
 It must needs be that such a man will give of- 
 fence to some ; but I have met men at the 
 Falls of St. Anthony, and on the Alleghany 
 Mountains, on a Mediterranean steamboat, on 
 the plains of Africa, at Constantinople and 
 Athens, men who were strangers to me, but 
 who gave me a hearty welcome because I 
 lived in the house next to that of their former 
 instructor. They inquired for his welfare, 
 showed a pride in having been his pupils, and 
 expressed the joy which they would feel if the 
 
33 
 
 minds of their children could be moulded by 
 his strong hand. He can well afford to let us 
 admit that he was not a perfect man. He can 
 well afford to be judged by the main current 
 of his influence, rather than by a few insulated 
 acts. The great argument in favor of him as 
 an instructor is the general history of his 
 school. When he became its principal, it was 
 far less prominent than now, although fewer 
 schools were then in existence. It had far less 
 influence than now upon the colleges and uni- 
 versities of the land, and was far less conspicu- 
 ous in the history of our national literature. 
 Often there had not been more than a hundred 
 men in the academy during a single year : 
 under his care, the number has been some- 
 times nearly three hundred. Before he came, 
 the senior class, to whom the principal mainly 
 devoted himself, consisted, on an average, of 
 about twenty members ; but since he came the 
 class has consisted of thirty-five, forty, forty- 
 three, forty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty-four, and sev- 
 enty-three members. The senior class has 
 been the great magnet of the institution ; 
 attracting young men to it from the planta- 
 
34 
 
 tions of Georgia, the cotton-fields of Louisi- 
 ana, the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi, 
 the Canadian Provinces. Since he has in- 
 structed it, not less than fourteen hundred and 
 seventeen young men have belonged to it. Of 
 the men who finished their studies in his 
 especial class, those who knew him best loved 
 him most : the reverence of many has deep- 
 ened as their age has mellowed; and not a few, 
 grateful for the discipline which they once con- 
 demned, have been glad to honor him by own- 
 ing, " He has done more than any other man 
 to form our character, and shape our life." Pu- 
 pils entered his school as boys, and left it as 
 men : he was the first instructor who gave 
 them an inspiration for their work; and, such 
 is the grateful habit of scholars, the earliest 
 benefactor of their minds is the last to be for- 
 gotten. Many young men who have applied 
 for admission to this school have been refused ; 
 many who have obtained admission have been 
 sent away. There have been no factitious 
 means of swelling the number of the students ; 
 no artifices have been resorted to ; and the his- 
 tory of the institution has verified one of Dr. 
 
35 
 
 Taylor's maxims, that the success of a semi- 
 nary of learning depends not so much on the 
 place of it as on the worth of it; its perma- 
 nent growth depends, not on the fopperies of 
 its scholarship, but on. the hard work per- 
 formed, on the exact discipline maintained, on 
 the living enthusiasm enkindled in it. His 
 great arguments for Phillips Academy have 
 been, the stillness observed in its study-hours 
 by day, the livelong quiet of the night, the 
 punctual attention of the young men to the 
 academy bell, their devotion to their books, 
 their living interest in the great truths of 
 Christianity. 
 
 While Dr. Taylor appeared to be thus ab- 
 sorbed in the academy, he found time for 
 other avocations. He was for thirty-three 
 years a member of the Board of Trustees of 
 Andover Theological Seminary, and the clerk 
 of the board. For many years, he was also 
 the librarian of the seminary, a member of 
 the Examining Committee of Harvard Col- 
 lege, a member of the Oriental Society, a 
 member and president of the Board of Trus- 
 tees of Pinkerton Academy, and also of the 
 
Adams Female Seminary in Derry, New 
 Hampshire. He took a personal interest in 
 the welfare of these two schools, a deep in- 
 terest in our colleges, whose curriculum of 
 study he was habitually striving to enlarge. 
 He attended the meetings of associations of 
 teachers, and contributed to them interesting 
 papers relating to mental culture, some of 
 which have been extensively read. 
 
 Besides his various essays which have ap- 
 peared in the periodicals devoted to education, 
 he was engaged in the publishing of several 
 important volumes. In 1843, he gave to the 
 public a " Guide for writing Latin," translated 
 from the German of John Phillip Krebs. In 
 connection with Professor B. B. Edwards of 
 Andover, he published in 1844 a " Grammar 
 of the Greek Language," for the use of high 
 schools and colleges, translated from the Ger- 
 man of Dr. Raphael Kiihner. In 1846, he 
 published an " Elementary Greek Grammar," 
 compiled from a work of Dr. Kiihner. Of this 
 grammar twenty editions have been printed ; 
 and he was preparing an entirely new edition 
 of it at the time of his death. The German 
 
37 
 
 author of these grammars has frequently 
 expressed his admiration of the manner in 
 which they have been translated into English. 
 Partly in consequence of the skill developed in 
 them, Dr. Taylor was honored in 1854 by the 
 corporation of Brown University, then under 
 the presidency of Francis Wayland, with the 
 degree of Doctor of Laws. 
 
 In 1851, he assisted in editing "The His- 
 tory of Londonderry," and prefaced it with a 
 Memoir, in fifty-five pages, of Rev. Edward L. 
 Parker, the " model pastor," who had written 
 the history. Dr. Taylor's Memoir gives many 
 indications of the good influence which had 
 been exerted on his mind by his early rever- 
 ence for ministers of the gospel, as well 
 as by the correlative fact that the minister 
 who had shaped his boyhood was worthy of 
 that reverence. 1 In 1861, he published a vol- 
 
 1 Among the many suggestions in this Memoir is the following : 
 " A failure at an examination is always humbling ; but it is doubly so 
 when made in the presence of one whom we know to feel a lively 
 interest in our improvement. The writer has not yet forgotten his 
 own mortified feelings at failing to perform an exercise in the presence 
 of his pastor, nor the resolution he then formed not to be found defi- 
 cient on a similar occasion. How many youthful minds have been 
 
time which illustrates his own method of teach- 
 ing, and is entitled " Method of Classical 
 Study ; illustrated by Questions on a few 
 Selections from Latin and Greek Authors." 
 In 1865, he published the " Memorial " of his 
 brother-in-law, Joseph P. Fairbanks, a liberal 
 benefactor of the literary institutions and the 
 clergy of Vermont. In 1870, appeared his last 
 finished volume, entitled " Classical Study ; its 
 Value illustrated by Extracts from the Writings 
 of Eminent Scholars," with an Introduction 
 by himself. 
 
 From the year 1852 to the time of his death, 
 he was an editor of the " Bibliotheca Sacra." 
 He corrected the proof-sheets of eighteen 
 volumes of this quarterly, and wrote several 
 anonymous articles for it. If the labor which 
 he spent upon it had been devoted to a lucra- 
 tive employment, it would have yielded him a 
 large income ; but his labor was chiefly a labor 
 of love. He was frugal yet generous in the 
 use of money. He had offers of large salaries, 
 
 thus quickened to nobler exertions cannot be told ; but without doubt 
 not a few owe their first zealous impulse to study to the manifest inter- 
 est and the counsels of their pastor at these school visitations." p. 
 34- 
 
39 
 
 if he would resort to other fields of labor; but 
 his desire was to be useful rather than to be 
 rich. As he was not avaricious, neither was 
 he ambitious : at least he was not ambitious 
 for himself, although he may have been for his 
 school and for classical learning. He was the 
 recipient of various honors ; but he cast all his 
 laurels down at the foot of the academy which 
 he loved, and of the cross which he loved still 
 more. 
 
 The zeal with which he prepared himself 
 for the exercises of his schoolroom is well 
 illustrated in a brief narrative of the foreign 
 tour which he took in 1856. On the yth 
 of March, he left New York for Havre ; spent 
 two days in Paris ; one day at Marseilles ; one 
 at Malta, where he examined with intense 
 interest the scenes of the shipwreck of the 
 apostle Paul ; two days at Alexandria, where 
 he studied the history of the Greek and Ro- 
 man conquerors, and of the Church fathers 
 who there immortalized their names ; several 
 days at Cairo, whence he made expeditions to 
 Heliopolis, where Solon, Plato, and perhaps 
 Moses, once resided, and where stands the 
 
40 
 
 obelisk which the patriarch Joseph and his 
 father Jacob had probably looked upon ; and 
 to the supposed site of Memphis, where many 
 notable events of Egyptian history occurred, 
 and whence arose several legends of the 
 Greek mythology. He literally revelled among 
 these scenes. It is characteristic of him, that, 
 exactly one month after the day of his leaving 
 New York, he was on the top of the Pyramid 
 of Ghizeh. He then hastened to the ancient 
 Joppa, and soon took up his abode for several 
 days in Jerusalem, the city of his love. He 
 wandered all alone, absorbed in religious medi- 
 tation, on the Mount of Olives. He exam- 
 ined with great minuteness the topography of 
 the city, and qualified himself to give several 
 lectures on the streets, the hills, the buildings, 
 both of ancient and modern Jerusalem. Some 
 of these lectures he has since delivered, gratui- 
 tously, as was his wont, to schools and churches 
 other than his own. He spent about five 
 weeks in Palestine, studying the geography 
 and the history of its old cities, exploring, as far 
 as he could, the Dead Sea, the Jordan, the Sea 
 of Galilee, and gathering a rich harvest of 
 
41 
 
 biblical learning and Christian sentiment from 
 the places which have been consecrated by the 
 feet of prophets and apostles and by the great 
 Teacher of the world. From Palestine he 
 hastened to catch a sight of the plains of 
 Troy, the old camp-ground of Xenophon, the 
 places where the Persian or Grecian armies 
 crossed the Hellespont or the Bosphorus ; and 
 then, leaving the Golden Horn, he took up his 
 residence in Athens. Here he obtained accu- 
 rate and vivid ideas of the ancient Parthenon 
 and the Erectheum, of the Pnyx and the 
 Bema, the quarries of Hymettus, the shore of 
 Phalerum. He delighted most of all in walk- 
 ing over the Areopagus, and surveying the 
 scenes which Paul must have had in view, 
 standing and speaking on that rock. He strove 
 to identify the Academy of Plato and the 
 Lycaeum of Aristotle. Amid all these objects of 
 classical interest, he was accumulating stores 
 of learning for his pupils. On the ninth day 
 of June last, I was wandering by moonlight 
 amid the ruins of the Acropolis, and was ac- 
 companied by a native Greek, who had been 
 educated at an American college, and who 
 
42 
 
 explained to me the manner in which the mar- 
 ble pillars of the Parthenon were constructed. 
 I had never read an account of the archi- 
 tectural principles developed in those pillars, 
 and of the manner in which those huge mar- 
 ble blocks had been so beautifully arranged 
 one over another. I expressed my admiration 
 of those principles and of the ingenuity with 
 which they had been detected. My companion 
 told me, that he had not gained that knowledge 
 from books, but that he had happened one day 
 to attend a lecture in Phillips Academy, and 
 he heard these principles described by Dr. 
 Taylor ; and that I had come all the way to 
 Athens to learn what I might have been told 
 by my nearest neighbor at home. 
 
 From this beautiful city Dr. Taylor made 
 excursions to Marathon and Eleusis, and to 
 various scenes made immortal by the genius of 
 Demosthenes. He regaled his eyes and his 
 mind by the sight of Corinth and Mount 
 Olympus, and the islands of the Aegean Sea, 
 which he described in a learned and stirring 
 letter to his pupils. He then hastened to the 
 ancient Brundusium, where the poet Virgil 
 
43 
 
 died ; examined the structure of the Roman 
 temples, theatres, and palaces at Herculaneum 
 and Pompeii ; studied the Museum of Antiqui- 
 ties at Naples ; made excursions to Paestum, 
 where he admired the Temple of Neptune, and 
 wondered at the mystery of its origin ; to 
 Baiae and Puteoli ; to the scenes rendered 
 interesting by the Muse of Virgil, his favorite 
 Latin poet, and by the residence and death of 
 Cicero, his favorite orator. He then repaired 
 to Rome, where he dwelt in his own hired 
 house ; studied the antiquities of the city 
 from early morning to the setting of the sun ; 
 spent his evenings, as he had spent them 
 during his whole tour, in making exact 
 records of his daily observations. He wan- 
 dered to the beautiful site of Tusculum and 
 the charming scenes of Tivoli : and, after de- 
 voting four weeks to a minute investigation of 
 the Roman antiquities, he repaired to Flor- 
 ence ; consecrated his days there to the exami- 
 nation of the old museums ; rose at three 
 o'clock on one morning, and climbed the hill 
 of Fiesole, immortalized by Galileo and Milton, 
 by Lorenzo the Magnificent, but especially by 
 
44 
 
 the old Pelasgic walls, which stood firm before 
 the foundations of the city of Rome had been 
 laid. He then resorted to the Swiss moun- 
 tains, where he was as faithful in examining 
 the wonders of Nature as he had been in exam- 
 ining the wonders of Art. It seemed as if he 
 would shout for joy as he looked up to Mont 
 Blanc and the Jungfrau. Sometimes, in view 
 of these scenes, he could not be persuaded to 
 remain on his horse : he insisted on walking 
 with his head uncovered, feeling a close con- 
 tact with the ground, making himself one with 
 the landscape that charmed him. The sunrise 
 and the sunset he watched from the peaks of 
 Switzerland with faithful interest ; and more 
 than once he has described them, as if he had 
 been a poet, to his pupils. 
 
 He next visited the old German universities; 
 the great schools of England and Scotland, 
 such as Eton, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, 
 and Glasgow, where he formed many ac- 
 quaintances with men whom he valued, and 
 who valued him. He was welcomed with dis- 
 tinguishing kindness by Mr. George Peabody, 
 who afterwards became a crenerous bene- 
 
 o 
 
45 
 
 factor of Phillips Academy ; and also by 
 the family of the late Dr. Arnold at Fox 
 How. On one day he walked through the 
 
 J O 
 
 streets of Edinburgh early in the morning ; 
 left the city at eight o'clock ; carefully ex- 
 amined Stirling Castle ; took a boat at the 
 foot of Loch Lomond, and sailed to the landing- 
 place opposite Ben Lomond ; left the boat, and 
 spent two hours in walking up the mountain ; 
 descended to the landing-place ; took another 
 boat to the head of the lake ; and then wrote a 
 description of the scenes he had witnessed, 
 the battle-fields of Robert Bruce ; the dwelling- 
 place and burial-place of the McGregors (the 
 clan in which he retained through life the 
 interest of his boyhood) ; the cave, prison, and 
 grave of Rob Roy; the Grampian Hills, and 
 other spots famous in history or romance. 
 This is a record of a single day : this illus- 
 trates the spirit of his entire journey. And at 
 length, having weaned out all his fellow-trav- 
 ellers ; having gathered books and maps, 1 and 
 
 1 After his return from his tour, he formed the plan, novel and 
 elaborate, of four large wall-maps of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and a 
 part of Southern Italy. The maps have been beautifully prepared 
 according to his original plan, and used by him in lecturing to literary 
 
 institutions. 
 
4 6 
 
 pictures and statuettes, and relics of Europe, 
 Africa, and Asia ; having been absent from his 
 academy only six months, and having accom- 
 plished what the majority of scholars would 
 not have done in twelve months, he reached 
 his home fresh and vigorous for his work ; 
 better prepared than ever to instruct his pupils, 
 to quicken their interest in all truth, and espe- 
 cially to give those biblical lessons, for one of 
 which he sacrificed his life. 
 
 When we saw Dr. Taylor verifying the 
 thousands of references in his Greek gram- 
 mars, we could not easily imagine him as capa- 
 ble of being transported with the emotions of 
 taste. But he was so. During a storm at sea, 
 he pleaded, and he was the only passenger 
 allowed, to remain on deck; where he stood at 
 the peril of his life, admiring the grandeur of 
 the ocean. Many of his relatives were soldiers, 
 some of them in the Revolutionary war; and 
 he had a touch of the military spirit. This 
 was seen when he superintended an exercise of 
 the fire-engine company which was composed 
 of his pupils. As he spoke to them he had a 
 kind of talismanic power over them : they 
 
47 
 
 moved at his word as if it had been an electric 
 shock. At such times, it was not easy to form 
 a picture of him as mourning over his faults ; 
 but his friends knew him to be a humble 
 imitator of the Man who was meek and lowly. 
 When he heard the bells of Notre Dame, he 
 said, " This compensates me for crossing the 
 ocean." When he looked at Cleopatra's 
 Needle, and other relics at Alexandria, he said, 
 " These repay me for all that I have expended 
 in my tour." But there was no scene in all his 
 foreign travel which delighted him so much as 
 those scenes in which he held spiritual com- 
 munion with the missionaries of the cross at 
 the hour of worship. He sat down at the sac- 
 ramental table in Cairo : only a few persons 
 were present, and they were from seven dif- 
 ferent nations ; he felt a union of spirit with 
 the seven great churches of the world ; while 
 he was thus keeping the Christian passover, he 
 seemed to feel a oneness with the saints who 
 instituted the Jewish passover not far from 
 that very spot. He was more overpowered by 
 that religious memorial than by any of the 
 human monuments which interested him. 
 
48 
 
 His piety was not of that kind which often 
 effervesces into rhapsody ; but it was sound and 
 deep. It was remarkable for its freedom from 
 pretence and parade. It was characterized, not 
 so much by a fervor of utterance as by a readi- 
 ness to deny himself for the sake of duty. 
 Few men have had so strong a desire as he 
 
 o 
 
 for social intercourse, and still have indulged 
 that desire so little when their duty called them 
 to work in solitude. From the very first of 
 his public life, the choice of doing what he 
 ought to do was the principle of his conduct. 
 While a member of the Theological Seminary, 
 thirty-four years ago, he wrote, "If I have 
 learned any one thing by experience, it is, that 
 the path of duty is the only way to secure true 
 happiness. It may look dark and dangerous 
 at first; but its end will surely be bright and 
 cheering. It terminates in peace and joy. Oh ! 
 I desire more and more to know and do the 
 simple will of my heavenly Father." As at 
 the first, so to the very last, of his public life, 
 the same resolute choice of doing what he 
 ought to do moved him onward. " My duty is 
 to my scholars " were among the few words 
 
49 
 
 which he uttered just before he stepped out of 
 his house for the last time. He was reminded 
 of his duty to himself, to his health ; but, as he 
 was wont to sacrifice himself for his pupils, he 
 repeated the words, " My first duty lies with 
 the school." 
 
 It is not given unto man to choose the op- 
 portunity of his departure from life. In the 
 Litany of the English Church, there is offered 
 the prayer for deliverance from sudden death. 
 In one of the London churches, the supplica- 
 tion is offered for rescue from sudden death for 
 which the dying is unprepared. We have read 
 of military chieftains, who, before expiring in 
 their quiet homes, expressed a wish that they 
 might have died on the field of battle, with their 
 swords in their hands, and their soldiers stand- 
 ing around them. On the last Saturday of the 
 life of Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, he dis- 
 charged his duties as usual, and, although 
 slightly ill, felt no indications of any alarming 
 result. But, early on sabbath morning, his ill- 
 ness returned ; and it was announced to his be- 
 wildered pupils that " Dr. Arnold was dead." 
 Five days ago, on the last Saturday morning, 
 
Dr. Taylor appeared in his usual health, exhib- 
 ited his wonted vigor in the exercises of his 
 school, visited Boston and Cambridge in the 
 afternoon ; and, although he felt for a time a 
 slight indisposition, he returned to his home 
 with more than usual buoyancy of spirit. He 
 rose on sabbath morning, prepared himself for 
 his large Bible-class, but complained, as Dr. 
 Arnold had done, of a stricture across his chest. 
 He was importuned to omit the biblical exer- 
 cise, and to remain at home ; but for a biblical 
 exercise like this he had been disciplining his 
 mind and his heart by long-continued toil; this 
 was his most important study ; this was his 
 chief joy; and we have seen that to leave a 
 duty unperformed was not his nature. He 
 went forth like a hero, carrying his New Testa- 
 ment through the deep and rapidly falling snow 
 to this building, which had been erected under 
 his care, and according to his plan. He loved 
 the very edifice itself. His pupils were assem- 
 bling to receive his Christian instruction ; the 
 bell was yet tolling ; he stopped in the vestibule 
 of his academy ; his countenance was changed ; 
 he fell ; he said not a word ; he neither sighed 
 
5 1 
 
 nor groaned, but ascended from the circle of 
 his astonished and loving and weeping pupils 
 to mingle with the angels of God. Bearing 
 the sacred volume, he had passed through the 
 storm ; and then the door of his schoolroom 
 proved to be " the gate of heaven." " And he 
 was not; for God took him." 1 
 
 He had been a man of deeds rather than a 
 man of words. He never loved to expose his 
 religious feelings to the public gaze ; but he 
 had a cautious though firm hope of his ac- 
 ceptance with his Redeemer; and that hope, 
 we feel assured, is now swallowed up in vision. 
 It would have been a pain to him if his im- 
 perial memory had faded gradually away ; if 
 his massive judgment had slowly degenerated 
 into that of a second childhood ; if his resolute 
 will had become sickly and feeble. He would 
 have chosen to die with all his armor on ; when 
 his eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
 abated ; when his life was well rounded and 
 complete, and when he could leave to his pupils 
 the example of a man strong in the Lord, and 
 in the power of his might. He would have 
 
 1 See Note A, Appendix. 
 
52 
 
 chosen to begin his sabbath in his favorite 
 academy, there to be surrounded with the 
 scholars whom he loved, and to end that same 
 sabbath in the company of the great teachers 
 of the Church, the sainted scholars of ancient 
 and modern times, his venerated and pious an- 
 cestors, and, above all, in the company of the 
 great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. 
 
SELECTIONS. 
 
SELECTIONS FROM THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 EVEN so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy 
 
 sight. MAIT. xi. 26. 
 
 This is the finger of God. EXOD. viii. 19. 
 
 Man dieth, and wasteth away . Thou hast 
 appointed his bounds that he cannot pass. 
 
 JOB xiv. 10, 5. 
 
 None can by any means redeem his brother, 
 nor give to God a ransom for him that he should 
 still live forever. PS. xiix. 7, 9. 
 
 For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth 
 take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the 
 stay and the staff, the mighty man and the man 
 of war, the judge and the prophet, and the pru- 
 dent and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and 
 the honorable man, and the counsellor, and the 
 cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. 
 
 ISA. iii. 1-3. 
 
56 
 
 In such an hour as ye think not the Son of 
 man cometh. MATT. xxiv. 44. 
 
 Thou sayest, Return, ye children of men. 
 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yes- 
 terday when it is past, and as a watch in the 
 night. PS. xc . 3,4. 
 
 So he giveth his beloved sleep. PS. cxxvii. 2. 
 
 Absent from the body, present with the 
 Lord. 2 COR. v. 8. 
 
 He that spared not his own Son, but deliv- 
 ered him up for us all, how shall he not with 
 him also freely give us all things ? ROM. viii. 32. 
 
 For I am persuaded that neither death nor 
 life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor 
 things present nor things to come, nor height 
 nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
 to separate us from the love of God which 
 is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ROM. viii. 38, 39. 
 
 For this cause I bow my knees unto the 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the 
 whole family in heaven and earth is named, that 
 he would grant you, according to the riches of 
 his glory, to be strengthened with might by his 
 
57 
 
 Spirit in the inner man ; that Christ may dwell 
 in your hearts by faith ; that ye, being rooted 
 and grounded in love, may be able to compre- 
 hend with all saints what is the breadth and 
 length and depth and height ; and to know the 
 love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye 
 might be filled with all the fulness of God. 
 
 EPH. iii. 14-19. 
 
 When this corruptible shall have put on incor- 
 ruption, and this mortal shall have put on im- 
 mortality, then shall be brought to pass the 
 saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in 
 victory. Thanks be to God, which giveth us 
 the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 i COR. xv. 54, 57. 
 
 This is life eternal, that they might know thee 
 the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou 
 hast sent. JOHN xvii. 3 . 
 
 Father, I will that they whom thou hast given 
 me be with me where I am, that they may be- 
 hold my glory which thou hast given me. 
 
 JOHN xvii. 24. 
 
 He that overcometh shall inherit all things. 
 
 REV. xxi. 7. 
 
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in 
 the temple of my God, and lie shall go no more 
 
 OUt. REV. iii. 12. 
 
 And so shall we ever be WITH THE LORD. 
 Wherefore comfort one another with these 
 
 WOrds. i THESS. iv. 17, 1 8. 
 
SERMON 
 
SERMON. 
 
 " Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy 
 head to-day ? " 2 KINGS ii. 3. 
 
 WITHOUT mention of father, mother, or de- 
 scent, Elijah the prophet is abruptly projected 
 into history, in the prime of his life, by the an- 
 nouncement, " And Elijah the Tishbite said." 
 
 When the evening of his work-day had come, 
 a work-day spent in quiet chambers, royal 
 streets, and the solitary wilderness, the in- 
 spired historian invites us, as it were, to a coro- 
 nation, to witness one of the sublhnest and most 
 significant events which Divine Grace ever per- 
 mitted the eyes of man to look upon, the sud- 
 den translation to heaven, in blazing chariot 
 and horses of fire, in the midst of flaming 
 
 NOTE. This sermon was preached at the chapel of the theological 
 seminary, on the sabbath following the death of Dr. Taylor. 
 
62 
 
 clouds and tempest and whirlwind, of a man 
 living and moving in the fulness of his labors 
 and his strength. Like an apparition he ap- 
 peared upon the scene of action : as suddenly 
 he left it. 
 
 In the verse to which your attention has been 
 called are included two main points in the nar- 
 rative of the last days of Elijah, the plan of 
 the Lord in the events, and the suddenness of 
 the prophet's removal. 
 
 " Knowest thou that the Lord will take away 
 thy master from thy head to-day? ' 
 
 The first lesson taught us, is to learn to look 
 upon death as God's appointment, in wisdom and 
 in love, and not as a fatality. 
 
 What is the time of death ? Is it any fixed 
 and certain time ? Is it confined to infancy, to 
 middle life, or to old age ? Look at the burial- 
 grounds. Are all graves of the same length ? 
 Are all men sure that they shall have timely 
 warning given by wasting sickness, by waning 
 strength, by signs of danger? No man can tell 
 whether death will strike him with the quick- 
 ness of lightning, or threaten often, and delay 
 long. If there be a time to die, and yet that 
 
time be wholly unknown to us, and is beyond 
 our control, with whom is the power of its ap- 
 pointment? The time of death, like the time 
 of life, is dependent upon the Author and Lord 
 of life. " Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, we are 
 created : thou takest away our breath, we die, 
 and return to the dust." 
 
 There is a time to die ; and that time is 
 lodged, where alone it can be safely lodged, in 
 the hands of Him without whom there could 
 be no life and no death. Since it belongs to 
 Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Love to appoint 
 the time of death, we may be glad in the 
 thought, that, coming by divine appointment, it 
 comes when it should and as it should. In this 
 conclusion, let us take up our permanent rest. 
 
 Without dwelling longer upon this point, let 
 us pass on to some of the lessons taught us by 
 the suddenness of removal from earth. 
 
 A near view of heaven is given in sudden 
 deaths among God's children. This is one 
 reason that should make the sudden death of a 
 Christian very precious in our sight. Doubtless 
 the home of the Blessed was brought very near 
 to the mental vision of the fifty and one who 
 
6 4 
 
 saw the prophet ascending in the chariot and 
 horses of fire. He left them, as they had known 
 him, in the fulness of his energy, with the fresh 
 impress of his love upon their hearts, his last 
 words of instruction still echoing in their ears ; 
 and in their mind's eye they could easily follow 
 him in his upward way, and behold him at the 
 right hand of the Majesty on high, as they had 
 seen him here, and feel sure that the traits of 
 character which had awed and attracted them 
 on earth would find congenial companionship 
 in the world upon which he had entered. 
 
 Not unlike this should be our feelings when 
 our righteous friends are suddenly taken from 
 our sight. We may trace their passage in the 
 heavenly flight : it seems as if the sky were held 
 back for us by unseen hands, that we might fol- 
 low with our gaze the transfigured ones within 
 the veil ; and, through the blessed offices of 
 memory and imagination, we seem to see them 
 still, as we knew them in all that was noble, 
 entered upon the joyful employments of their 
 blessed life. Can impressions of this kind be 
 so strong when our loved ones have wasted by 
 sickness, and become weakened by infirmities ? 
 
True, they then teach us by their faith, their pa- 
 tience, their resignation. Their passive virtues 
 shine with a heavenly lustre ; but still there has 
 been a change : the active energies of their 
 former days have been suspended; that which 
 made them unwearied messengers of charity 
 and duty has long since been yielded up to 
 slow decay. We have almost forgotten how 
 they looked in health; and our latest remem- 
 brances of them are associated with their weak- 
 ness and their disease ; and we ask ourselves, 
 Can this be the bright and happy being of for- 
 mer days that has entered into rest? 
 
 The sick-chamber has been the ante-chamber 
 to heaven ; but how sombre it was for the suf- 
 fering that was endured there! Our very 
 thoughts of the heavenly mansions are tinged 
 with the gloom that has hung over us for weeks 
 and months in the sick-room. Not so when 
 death comes to seal the eyes with a flash, before 
 they are waxed dim with age and disease, or the 
 natural force is abated. Then our last remem- 
 brances of the departed are of all that they 
 were in the fulness of their moral strength and 
 beauty. All that was in them of purity and 
 
66 
 
 loveliness, and variety of character, lives with 
 us as a type and memorial of the spirit of the 
 angelic life. 
 
 Again : the sudden death of those who are 
 prepared to die saves them from much distress 
 and misery. To the surviving friends the sud- 
 den shock is indeed appalling. We may not 
 attempt to describe it. The plans of life formed 
 by many whose lives were interwoven with 
 those who are gone so quickly are instantane- 
 ously prostrated ; hopes are scattered ; a blight 
 is cast upon every scene and object familiar to 
 the departed. Every thing seems to conspire 
 to aggravate the severity of the stroke. But if, 
 for a moment, we can forget our grief, and think 
 of our friends in their abode in glory, what a 
 soothing to our wounded spirits comes to us in 
 our forgetfulness of self and remembrance of 
 them ! Death has come suddenly ; but from 
 how much sorrow and pain, how much lingering 
 anguish, how many sleepless nights and weari- 
 some days, have the departed been saved ! 
 Death has come suddenly : it was the shock 
 of a moment. Is that to be weighed against 
 the agonies of weeks, of months, of years? In 
 
6 7 
 
 the tenderness of our grief, we think of how 
 much happiness we meant for them ; but let us 
 not forget, that, though happiness might have 
 been, misery, too, might have been, had life con- 
 tinued. Let not our ^hearts be troubled. 
 When we speak of what might have been, we 
 only declare our most profound ignorance. 
 We do not know what might have been. God 
 knows, and God alone. God knows from what 
 sundering of cherished ties, what tears and 
 groans of agonized friends, what anxieties con- 
 cerning those who must be left, from what bit- 
 terness of death, the loved ones have been 
 spared. 
 
 It is often the experience of those whom God 
 has blessed with abounding vitality, that their 
 love of and hold on life is so strong, that, while 
 they may not dread the world to come, yet nat- 
 urally, and in a peculiar manner, they fear the 
 moment of dissolution ; and, with all the joys of 
 a certain heaven before their vision, the thought 
 of the passage to the other world fills the mind 
 with terror. It is not death, but dying, that they 
 shrink from : it is a dread independent of any 
 fears for their future destiny. The pain of part- 
 
68 
 
 ing with one's possessions and darling objects 
 of earthly satisfaction is not so terrible as the 
 dread of something hitherto utterly unknown. 
 It is a leap in the dark, a plunge into a new 
 element, we know not what. True, death is 
 not a leap, a plunge, a sudden transition ; but it 
 seems so; and the seeming has all the terror of 
 a reality. 
 
 From this fearful trial of the good man's faith 
 does sudden death exempt him. No spectres 
 haunt him for a moment. The old, old fear 
 has not a chance of tormenting him. He does 
 not even see the dark valley : there is no vision 
 of the rod and the staff. He needs none. His 
 last look was one of happy life upon beautiful 
 life : the next look is upon the beauteous King 
 and Lord of life. 
 
 At one moment he was conscious of living : 
 the next he was conscious of life, eternal life. 
 Now he has no thought of dying: in the twink- 
 ling of an eye, not conscious of having died, 
 he suddenly finds himself alive from the dead. 
 This moment, he was awake here: the next, he 
 has awaked in His likeness, satisfied. Happy, 
 happy he to have been borne so quickly on 
 
angels' wings across those turbid waves which 
 so many of the righteous must slowly, wearily 
 ford with fear and trembling! 
 
 In the solemn and beautiful Litany of the 
 Episcopal Church, Sunday after Sunday goes 
 up the prayer, "From sudden death, good Lord 
 deliver us." There must be many who repeat 
 it,, who yet cannot heartily offer it. If sudden 
 death, so painless, bringing heaven so quickly 
 nigh, be the relief and blessing that we have 
 seen it to be, why should we pray the good 
 Lord to deliver us from it? " If I am living a 
 humble Christian life," says the child of God; 
 u if I am prepared to meet my Master at any 
 hoar, be it at the cock-crowing, or in the morn- 
 ing, or at the eventide ; if the prevalent frame of 
 my mind is heavenly and spiritual, then, in- 
 stead of praying, ' From sudden death, good 
 Lord deliver me,' I would rather beg my Mas- 
 ter to spare me the slow decay, the lingering 
 disease, the tearful farewell, the final struggle in 
 dissolution. I would ask him to let me work 
 at my post till the very last moment, and then 
 close my life with my labors." 
 
 But God needs his suffering witnesses, as well 
 
70 
 
 as his valiant defenders of the faith. Let us 
 remember Paul's words, and see to it that 
 " Christ shall be magnified in our bodies, wheth- 
 er it be by life or by death ; " that we glorify him 
 in the pains of a lingering illness, or in a life 
 conformed to his law of life. 
 
 But, my friends, why this almost universal 
 shrinking from death ? Is death always such 
 a fearful talisman ? Is every thing terrific, and 
 is nothing bright and fair, in the world to come ? 
 Why this fear ? Is not this the secret ? the 
 consciousness of being so ill prepared for death. 
 To be 
 
 " Cut off even in the blossom of our sins, 
 No reckoning made, but sent to our account 
 With all our imperfections on our heads : " 
 
 this is what stares us in the face, and prevents 
 us from reading our titles to heaven clear. 
 Providence does indeed startle us into thinking 
 from time to time, by snatching some neighbor 
 or friend in an instant. We ask the question, 
 " Why was it not I ? " The warning comes 
 thrillingly to our hearts, " Be ye also ready. . . . 
 Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed 
 
lest he fall." Our minds are solemnized. We 
 are more prayerful for a time. Men begin to 
 pray who never prayed before. Resolutions to 
 serve God and seek heaven are formed. But 
 the terror soon passes;^ and with the fleeting 
 emotion fades the resolution, and in a little time 
 we are living on in the same old ways as if 
 Providence had never arrested our dull ears by 
 his warning voice. 
 
 We often thank our heavenly Father for pre- 
 serving us from " dangers unseen." Do we suf- 
 ficiently comprehend what that thanksgiving 
 covers ? Think of the many causes of death, 
 latent within us, and lurking without us ; of the 
 many avenues of our daily walk by which the 
 breath of life may be expelled ; of the frailty of 
 our complex frame, with its thousand delicate 
 strings. 
 
 " We die, if one be gone ; 
 Strange that a harp of a thousand strings 
 Should keep in tune so long ! w 
 
 There are a thousand snares and pitfalls for our 
 souls ; but reflect upon the hidden deaths that 
 lie secreted all around us to assail our bodies. 
 
72 
 
 The scratch of a pin, the sting of an insect, 
 the turn of a wheel, the slipping of a belt, the 
 misplacing of a switch, the loss of a screw, a 
 bolt from the clouds, may send us at once 
 from our bloom and prime to the judgment- 
 seat of God. The bursting of a blood-vessel 
 from over-exertion may send life pouring in 
 a crimson flood from the bowl broken at the 
 fountain. That very fulness of habit which 
 calls out admiring compliments for your buoy- 
 ant strength may be the indication of too much 
 health ; and the insidious, unsuspected disease 
 may instantly still the throbbing of the heart. 
 What surety has any one of us, preacher or 
 hearer, that he shall be exempt from a quick 
 summons to appear before the Judge ? Would 
 that these were the words of rhetorical exagger- 
 ation ! But I do not speak them with the ob- 
 ject of arousing a blind terror. I would rather 
 excite thankfulness for the incessant miracle of 
 God's guardian care; that the plans of life can 
 be made as if long life and the accomplishment 
 of our endeavors were to be surely ours. 
 
 Once more : such instances of sudden death 
 are a proof, and pledge, and ground of hope of 
 man's immortality. 
 
73 
 
 Without a higher life, man is the great excep- 
 tion in existence, "the only broken column 
 in creation." Every thing else completes the 
 design of its being, both as to its length of years, 
 and purpose of existence ; but man *' cometh 
 forth as a flower, and is cut down : he fleeth as 
 a shadow, and continueth not." With him 
 nothing is finished. Who is completely satis- 
 fied with his endeavors ? One only could truly 
 say, " I have finished the work thou gavest me 
 to do." How few even arrive at the scriptural 
 limits of life, the brief threescore years and 
 ten ! It is only when a man sees that his life 
 belongs to an eternal life beyond life, that he 
 can bring the enigma of his existence into har- 
 mony with the rest of creation. In the light 
 of this thought only can we interpret the sud- 
 den removal of the pure and the good. 
 
 Here, for instance, is a man of ripe mind and 
 a noble heart. We have known and loved such 
 an one. He filled a large and honored place in 
 the public eye. Science knew him ; humani- 
 ty blessed him ; religion rejoiced in him. Im- 
 portant interests were committed to his trust. 
 He was walking firmly and faithfully in his 
 
74 
 
 path of progress and usefulness. The meridian 
 of life had been reached and passed, and he 
 had entered on what Chalmers called "the sab- 
 bath of his life," six working decades past; 
 but this man's sabbath was rest in action. So 
 active was he, that it seemed as if his noonday 
 sun had been commanded to stand still. Sud- 
 denly his sun is darkened by clouds from 
 which the snowflakes fall ; and he sinks in all 
 his glorious strength, while "knowledge weeps, 
 and the ways of Zion mourn." 
 
 Yet is he dead? Has that burning and 
 shining light been extinguished by capricious 
 powers of the air, while so many smoking, glim- 
 mering rushlights fill life with their feebleness 
 and reeking impurity ? It cannot be. Was it 
 not, rather, that a new luminary was needed 
 among the golden lights of heaven, to shine 
 with a purer lustre still, and so he "was trans- 
 ferred to the galaxy around the throne of the 
 Eternal " ? 
 
 We may wish, sometimes, that a little space 
 had been given him to prepare for his solemn 
 entrance into eternity, and for the testimony of 
 his faith ; but let us remember that the closing 
 
75 
 
 scene, for the most part, is worth very little : 
 it is not the last moment, but the whole life, 
 breathing the spirit of Christ, which affords at 
 once the best preparation, and the best evidence 
 of fitness, for the final departure. We may 
 sometimes wish that the loving hands of his 
 dearest and best could have ministered to his 
 necessities; but, so quickly did he rise, there 
 was no need of ministering hands. We may 
 wish that Memory had been permitted to soothe 
 him with her song of duty done, and Religion 
 to stand by him with uplifted finger : and yet 
 there was exceeding fitness in his expiring 
 as he did; and it was most appropriately ordered 
 that he should come to the door of the sepulchre 
 where his Lord had lain, bearing the precious 
 spices of a stainless life, on the morning of 
 " the first day of the week." 
 
 We may sometimes wish that he had been 
 spared to the youth of our country yet many 
 years, to guide them by his counsels, and to 
 train their immortal powers; but we will re- 
 turn thanksgiving that he has been given to 
 his country for so many years. We may mourn 
 that his great powers, which as yet showed no 
 
7 6 
 
 traces of deca} r , should be so early extinguished ; 
 and yet, when we reflect how sad it is to see 
 a great mind breaking up, and a noble intellect 
 shattered and overthrown by age, it was well 
 that his sun should go down while it was yet 
 day. It was a grand termination for such a 
 noble life. It was the end which, perhaps, every 
 man of powerful intellect covets for himself. 
 
 My younger brothers and fellow-pupils of the 
 same beloved teacher, if I mistake not, the 2Qth 
 of January, 1871, will forever be to you a mem- 
 orable sabbath ; for, like the fifty and one stu- 
 dents in the schools of Bethel and Jericho, you 
 witnessed on that day the departure from earth 
 of your revered instructor. 
 
 The prophet of God went forth on the morn- 
 ing of his last day, knowing that the final hour 
 of his earthly and troubled career had come ; 
 but our honored master left his quiet home 
 without one word of warning whispered in his 
 ear of his sudden translation so soon to be ac- 
 complished. 
 
 The fifty pupils of the ancient teacher came 
 out with the sad presentiment, that, for the last 
 
77 
 
 time, they were to see the instructor whom they 
 almost worshipped, and who had given new life 
 to their studies; but you, my brothers, were 
 any secret intimations given to you last sabbath 
 morning, that for the last time you were to see 
 your revered instructor in life ? 
 
 The students of Bethel and Jericho turned 
 to their fellow-pupil, and whispered in his ear, 
 " Knowest thou that the Lord will take away 
 thy master from thy head to-day? " Was there 
 one among you who could answer with the 
 emphasis of the mourning Elisha, " Yea, / 
 know it " ? No. Is it possible that among so 
 many of you, not even one knew that your 
 master was to be taken away from your head 
 that day ? And he, so strong, so full of knowl- 
 edge and wisdom, did not he know it ? Truly, 
 in such an hour as we think not, " the Son of 
 man cometh. Of that day and hour knoweth 
 no man, no, not the angels of heaven." 
 
 On the upper terraces, or on the mountain- 
 heights behind the city, " stood afar off," in 
 awe, the fifty students of Bethel and Jericho to 
 watch the upward flight of the prophet: but 
 you, my brothers, you did not stand at a dis- 
 
tance to gaze upon the final scene ; you were 
 near, very near, so near, that you could almost 
 hear the parting spirit sigh ; you could almost 
 hear the fluttering of his rapidly-stilling heart ; 
 you saw those eyes which had smiled upon 
 your good deeds, and frowned upon your ill- 
 doing, compose themselves in fixed and ma- 
 jestic repose. 
 
 Only Elijah and Elisha only "they two 
 stood by Jordan ; " but all of you stood with 
 him beside the rushing steam that rolls all 
 round the world : yet he crossed alone. The 
 waters parted for him alone : no favorite pupil 
 could bear him company to talk " as they still 
 went on." " The aged Gileadite could not rest 
 until he again set foot on his own side of the 
 river : " our loved one was never truly at rest 
 until his foot touched those 
 
 " Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood." 
 
 But his lips were not permitted to inquire 
 what he could do for you before he was taken 
 away from you ; and it was not for you to ask 
 that a double portion of his spirit should rest 
 upon you. A hard thing, indeed, to ask that 
 
79 
 
 even two morsels of such a spirit as his should 
 be bestowed upon our young hearts ! You saw 
 no rush of flames, of steeds and triumphal car, 
 when he was swept from earth ; you saw no 
 mantle floating down from the sky ; perhaps in 
 the awfulness and mystery of that hour, over- 
 whelmed by the dread and the suddenness of 
 the unlooked-for final parting, you could not 
 even in spiritual vision see his immortal spirit 
 winging its way to join itself in companionship 
 to Elijah and Elisha, and the fifty students of 
 Bethel and of Jordan, and to all the noble army 
 of prophets and teachers that now sit in loving 
 reverence at the feet of the great Teacher. 
 
 My young brothers, could you have had the 
 mournful joy that Elisha had, of hearing the 
 last words of your beloved teacher, saying, " Ask 
 what I shall do for you before I be taken from 
 you," would you have asked for any thing less 
 than the only gift that was in Elisha's mind to 
 ask ? " We pray thee let a double portion of 
 thy spirit rest upon us." What a rich parting 
 gift would you have asked ! " A double portion 
 of his spirit!" the spirit of unhasting, un- 
 resting diligence ; of unpretending honesty ; of 
 
8o 
 
 hearty sympathy ; of abhorrence of evil ; of 
 brave loyalty to noble principles ; of sound 
 practical wisdom ; of self-reliance among men ; 
 but of profound humility before God. A double 
 portion of a spirit like this for a parting gift ! 
 He could not grant the gift; but the Giver of 
 all gifts, who so richly endowed him, can im- 
 part the same to whomsoever will ask and work 
 for them. 
 
 I am not here for eulogy. This is a place 
 consecrated to the praise of God and the exal- 
 tation of Christ, and not to the praise of man. 
 But we may not hesitate to render deserved 
 honor to them whom God honors, and in the 
 place where they honored him. You have al- 
 ready heard from the only fitting source all that 
 can be said of our noble friend's character, in- 
 fluence, and labors ; but I cannot forbear to 
 place a pupil's tribute of grateful affection upon 
 the new-made grave of my beloved master. 
 Could I trust myself to speak at length of my 
 own personal debt to him as a teacher, I might, 
 indeed, have much to say to you ; but, without 
 one word of undeserved or unfelt homage, let 
 this suffice. I owe to him, and there are 
 
8i 
 
 hundreds, yes, thousands, now living who would 
 eagerly join me in the admission, I owe to him 
 more than to any earthly teacher besides ; 
 more than any amount of gratitude or service 
 on my part could adequately repay. I cannot 
 tell, no one can tell, how much a pupil owes to 
 a teacher of such unique qualities as our late 
 principal possessed. Who can weigh and meas- 
 ure the amount of intellectual and moral force 
 which such a man infused into pliant minds? 
 You may as well try to estimate how much the 
 food and air of ten years ago helped to make 
 the vital forces of your body what they are to- 
 day. Many a man of influence can say, " I am 
 what I am ; but I could not have been what I 
 am, had not he been my master in youth." I am 
 glad for the present senior class for what they 
 have already known and felt of his power and 
 guidance. I grieve with them that they could 
 not have been guided by him to a joyful end. 
 
 From one point of view, I deeply sympathize 
 with the under classes in the profound disap- 
 pointment that they must feel as they think of 
 what might have been theirs to enjoy and to 
 profit by under his skill and wisdom. 
 
82 
 
 God knows upon whom the mantle of our 
 risen teacher has fallen. Pray, my brothers, 
 pray that the guardians of the institution may 
 see who it is that is to wear it. If God ap- 
 points the successor of your fallen leader, you 
 may still hope to finish your course with joy 
 and with honor. 
 
 Meanwhile, my young brothers, live and 
 work, and I believe you will, as if you had lis- 
 tened to a moment's parting counsel from 
 those lips that were voiceless on that sad 
 morning as you received his sinking form into 
 your arms. Might he not have said to you, 
 " If you would respect my memory, be obe- 
 dient; be dutiful; be loving; be earnest; be 
 pure, brave, and manly ; be Christlike ; improve 
 your powers to the uttermost, that you may be 
 good men and good citizens, as God accounts 
 goodness. Revere and love my successor, 
 when he shall be appointed, as you have loved 
 and revered me. Transfer your loyalty and 
 loving obedience entirely to him. In the 
 mean time, rally around your present teachers 
 in this hour so trying to them. I go away ; 
 but the school remains. Let your loyalty to 
 
the school be a motive to well-doing. Be 
 proud of your membership, and let no stain of 
 meanness nor rebellion blot your record. For 
 my sake, love the school for which I have 
 given my life. Let the Iqve of truth, the love 
 of order, the love of duty, the love of purity, 
 and the love of God, be abiding principles in 
 you, daily manifesting themselves in your out- 
 ward action. I go away from you ; but I shall 
 watch over you, and follow you, and love you 
 still"? 
 
 " We miss him ! " My brothers, you have 
 briefly, fittingly, and touchingly expressed it all 
 in those simple words you have inscribed 
 above that chair where he daily sat, and around 
 which his undying echoes will linger. We miss 
 him ! You and we are personally afflicted. 
 From a hundred lips have I heard it said dur- 
 ing the last week, " I feel this to be a personal 
 loss." " We miss him ! " That is the best 
 tribute we can pay to his blessed memory. 
 
 Twenty-nine years ago, four years after our 
 lamented teacher entered upon his duties as 
 principal of Phillips Academy, one of the no- 
 
8 4 
 
 blest men of modern times died at his post as 
 head master of the great English school at 
 Rugby. 
 
 Our departed friend has often been called 
 the Arnold of America. But why make him 
 great by comparison ? I would rather choose 
 to put Arnold for England, and call him her 
 greatest educator ; and I would put Taylor 
 for America, and call him her greatest school- 
 master. The fame of our greatest educator can- 
 not be heightened by calling him by the name 
 of a foreigner, however noble ; nor will the re- 
 nown of England's greatest schoolmaster be 
 diminished by our refusal to clothe our teacher 
 with the thin gauze of a name. Our master 
 was not Arnold ; and yet one is surprised to 
 find so many points of resemblance between 
 these two representative teachers ; and we are 
 almost forced to conclude, that, in the character 
 of all true educators, there must, of a necessity, 
 be striking similarities. 
 
 Like Arnold, he began his great life-work at 
 about thirty years of age. 
 
 Like Arnold, he had great intensity of phys- 
 ical life, which made labor a positive pleasure 
 to him. 
 
Like Arnold, he was eminently fitted by na- 
 ture for his great work, in his love for impart- 
 ing instruction. His vigor of spirits enabled 
 him to deal with the young and the old ; and, 
 from his own lofty sense pf noble living, he felt 
 the need of introducing high principles of ac- 
 tion into the entire school-life. 
 
 Like Arnold's, the school seemed to be en- 
 tirely dependent on the head master. The 
 institution was penetrated with his spirit. The 
 school and the man were identical. Fathers 
 as often spoke of sending their boys to Dr. 
 Taylor, as of sending them to Phillips Acad- 
 emy. And no wonder. His whole ardent 
 soul was in the school. The very air seemed 
 pervaded by his influence. He seemed to look 
 upon the institution in which he had spent the 
 morning, noontide, and hale afternoon of his 
 years, with the pride and satisfaction of the 
 minstrel king when he gazed at the battle- 
 ments of Zion. Whatever be the affection 
 with which we remember the associate teach- 
 ers, whatever may have been the school-life 
 itself, or the beauties of the natural scenery, 
 the one image before our minds, in recalling 
 
86 
 
 our school-days, is not Andover, not the acad- 
 emy, but the Doctor. And when, in the time to 
 come, his old pupils return to these familiar 
 scenes of their school-days, they cannot refrain, 
 I am sure, from standing over his grave, as 
 Tom Brown stood over Arnold's, with hearts 
 throbbing with a dull sense of their loss, and 
 crying out in their souls as he did, " If I 
 could only have seen the Doctor again for one 
 five minutes ; have told him all that was in my 
 heart, what I owed to him, how I loved and 
 reverenced him, and will, by God's help, follow 
 his steps in life and death, I could be happy." 
 Like Arnold, too, the objects he aimed at in 
 education were character and power. The 
 method of discipline to accomplish these ob- 
 jects was singularly like that of the great 
 teacher at Rugby. We all felt that he wanted 
 to develop in us a self-respecting manhood, for 
 one thing ; and, for another thing, he aimed at 
 a healthy and harmonious development of all 
 our powers. It was the boy in the totality of 
 his nature that he aimed to educate. Accord- 
 ingly, his method was to seek to awaken the in- 
 tellectual activity of every individual boy. He 
 
87 
 
 told us as little as possible, but made us discover 
 as much as possible. To be educated in this 
 way, as he often used to tell us, was to be self- 
 educated. He made us feel most sensibly the 
 difference between mere ^instruction and educa- 
 tion. It was the difference between the means 
 and the end to be secured by them. He 
 seemed to teach as if it was not his business 
 simply to impart knowledge, but to teach the 
 way of getting knowledge. It took us a long 
 time to see, perhaps we never did see, in " No. 
 9," how our hours of study and the reci- 
 tation-drill were slowly, but surely, forming 
 mental habits valuable for any sphere of future 
 action. What we had to do must be done ac- 
 curately. It must be done with all the speed 
 possible and consistent : this required the con- 
 centration of our attention. We must be 
 ready with our reason for the faith that was in 
 us. This cultivated logic. Facts must not only 
 be collected, but weighed, compared, and classi- 
 fied ; and this taught us method. With a start 
 in these four things, accuracy, attention, 
 logic, and method, he equipped us for col- 
 lege. These, he told us, were the intellectual 
 
instruments that every man needed, no matter 
 what might be his calling in life. 
 
 With the dullest of us he was patient and 
 helpful, if he could be assured that we were 
 doing our best; but for the geniuses of the 
 class, who " got along " by the light of Nature, 
 without study, he had no mercy. He taught 
 us that true study was the very soul of genius. 
 Mere smartness with him was of little account. 
 He wanted to see it united with sterling char- 
 acter. From genius or dullard all he required 
 was faithful work, high principle, and gentle- 
 manly conduct. The business-like manner of 
 conducting a recitation, the quick glance of 
 the eye, the rapping of the pencil, the pleased 
 look and simple nod of the head which fol- 
 lowed a good recitation, the deep, and severe- 
 toned " sufficient " which followed a poor one, 
 which he knew might have been better, all 
 these little traits of manner, how often will 
 they be recalled and talked over now that he 
 is gone! 
 
 Curiously skilful he was in discovering the 
 powers of his pupils : he saw the best thing that 
 was in every one of us. He was able to point out 
 
to the weak boy in what consisted his strength ; 
 able to point out to every one the way in which 
 they should struggle up : but who ever saw 
 him parading his own powers ? The mere 
 idea of setting himself up as a superior being 
 would have drawn from him one of those 
 bursts of merriment, happy as childhood, 
 which those who thoroughly knew him often 
 used to hear. 
 
 Like Arnold, in the treatment of his pupils 
 he was at once tender and severe. I am not 
 sure but that this is the character of the ideal 
 schoolmaster in a school like ours. 
 
 We used sometimes to complain that he 
 treated us too much like boys. Well ! what 
 were we but "boys," and school-boys at that? 
 But who can say that he did not treat us as 
 school-boys that were to be, if he could help to 
 make us, Christian men ? 
 
 All of us stood in awe of him ; many of us 
 loved him; some of us dreaded him; no one 
 hated him ; and only those feared him who 
 had, by their own folly, disturbed their friendly 
 relations with him. None of us could say but 
 that he always gave kindly admonitions and 
 
9 o 
 
 timely premonitions to avert a threatened 
 danger; and he never failed to call our atten- 
 tion to principles which lay more deeply seated 
 than the mere question of the moment. It 
 was our good, and ' not his pleasure, that he 
 sought in the correction. 
 
 When the lips, compressed and firm, closed 
 after the utterance of one clear, unalterable 
 No, we saw at once the uselessness of further 
 parley. Who shall say that this union of firm- 
 ness, severity, and tenderness, was not infinitely 
 better than the manner which is both cold and 
 soft ? I well remember of hearing him say, 
 when speaking once of his austerity, " I some- 
 times find, with Hamlet, that I must be cruel 
 only to be kind." But his " cruelty " was only 
 a just severity. 
 
 Do you ask me if our master had no faults ? 
 As Everett answered of Webster, " He was a 
 man. Do you again ask me the question ? 
 Look in your own breast, and get the answer 
 there." In individual cases, he may have been 
 too hasty in his action. Sensitive boys may 
 have been sometimes unnecessarily wounded 
 by his intense expressions concerning compara- 
 
tively small transgressions. But, in general, 
 his wonderful practical sagacity in searching 
 a boy's character at a glance, prompted the 
 right word, the right tone, and the right action. 
 Never, in his severest moods, did he appear 
 hard-hearted. It was his scorn of any thing 
 low, vicious, or conscienceless, and not per- 
 sonal resentment, that sometimes occasioned a 
 burst of indignation, and gave to his eye a look 
 that penetrated your inmost heart. But he 
 
 " Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead for him, like angels, trumpet-tongued." 
 
 If few expressions of affection escaped our 
 lips while we were his immediate pupils, what 
 freedom there was in expressing it in after- 
 years! Not many months since, in walking 
 down the street with one of his former pupils, 
 upon seeing the Doctor a little in advance, my 
 friend exclaimed in familiar phrase and with an 
 energetic warmth, " / just love that man ! " I 
 believe that is a typical expression of almost 
 every graduate from No. 9 who lived and 
 worked worthily while he was here. And the 
 
9 2 
 
 reckless have often admitted, that, while his 
 rebukes and punishments excited their anger 
 at the time, they could not help saying that 
 they were treated with strict justice, and often 
 with more mercy than they deserved. My fel- 
 low-pupils, if you have seen only the com- 
 pressed lip of dignity and firmness on the face 
 forever hidden from us, I am sorry for you, in- 
 deed, that you could not have seen what so 
 many of us former pupils have so often de- 
 lighted in when we have met him as the 
 friend, and not as the master, the most beau- 
 tiful smile that I ever saw on a man's face, the 
 most cordial greeting possible, and the sincerest 
 interest in our present work and future pros- 
 pects. Sorry, indeed, am I, that you will 
 never know the deep undercurrent of sympathy 
 which extended to all his pupils, and which 
 sometimes broke through the reserve of his 
 outward manner; for he seemed to have great 
 difficulty, and perhaps dislike, in speaking 
 when he had no real occasion for words. 
 
 All of you cannot experience the pardon- 
 able pride which many have felt in being the 
 pupils of a man so widely known to the coun- 
 
93 
 
 try. The feeling was excited the moment we 
 entered No. 9, and felt his personal contact: 
 then we felt sure that the half had not been told 
 us of his ability. We were prouder of him than 
 ever when the school-tradition came down to 
 us, that the Doctor had once held a contest 
 with the famous Greek scholar, the late Pres. 
 Felton of Harvard College, and that our 
 teacher had come off victorious over the Cam- 
 bridge professor. 
 
 All of you who were his can recall, without 
 effort, the union of simplicity and dignity, man- 
 liness and devotion, with which he used to con- 
 duct the services in the prayer-room. The 
 earnest counsels that often followed the prayer 
 contained more practical wisdom than many of 
 us were able to appreciate. With what trem- 
 ulous earnestness would he sometimes speak 
 of cases of dishonor that had occurred in the 
 school, showing a deep sorrow of heart that 
 there could be boys so depraved as even to 
 think of the disreputable deed ! 
 
 But I must not indulge in reminiscences. 
 They would take me too far. 
 
 Like Arnold, he was a successful teacher. 
 
94 
 
 His success was proportioned to his merits. 
 It was visible not only upon the intellectual 
 culture of his pupils, but also upon their 
 character. That continual watchfulness and 
 readiness of mind, that untiring energy, that 
 clearness of communication, that sympathizing 
 insight into the youthful mind, qualities so 
 essential to the true teacher, were his in an 
 unusual measure. These qualities we all sensi- 
 bly felt ; but the indirect influences which dis- 
 tilled from his life, which emanated from the 
 whole man in his step, eye, and tone, these 
 invisible influences on character cannot even 
 be indicated ; and He alone can read them 
 who can see that which is real and enduring 
 in character, and who will one day recognize all 
 faithful, unseen endeavor. 
 
 Like Arnold's, his influence was felt as a 
 Christian. I hardly know how to speak of my 
 impressions of his; spiritual qualities ; for they 
 did not seem to be detached from his mind, 
 but pervaded it: they were not so much in 
 his words as in his life. A natural diffidence 
 seemed to keep him from much speaking on 
 religious themes; but no one was ever left in 
 
95 
 
 doubt what principle of Christ's had been vi- 
 olated in our wrong-doing; and in numberless 
 ways was Christ held up before us as Re- 
 deemer, Motive, Model, and Guide. We all 
 felt that our master was v a Christian in every 
 pulse of his being; that he believed in Christ 
 as a truth, and knew him in his daily life ; and 
 that it was his ardent desire, that all the affairs 
 of the school should be pervaded with the 
 spirit of Christ. 
 
 In these particulars, their peculiar fitness 
 for the work of educators, in their relations 
 to the great educational institutions of which 
 they had the charge, in their objects and practi- 
 cal methods of teaching, in their personal rela- 
 tions to their pupils, in the invisible influence 
 of their own characters, in the Christian spirit 
 of their lives and labors, and in many individual 
 traits of manner and character, Arnold of 
 Rugby and Taylor of Andover were wonder- 
 fully alike. 
 
 Their points of difference were such as the 
 Father of their spirits determined in his own 
 counsels when he sent them into their great 
 work. Whatever might have been their differ- 
 
ence in natural endowments, both were alike 
 in this, they cultivated their natural powers 
 honestly, truly, zealously, and to their utmost. 
 
 In many respects so much alike in life, they 
 were strangely alike in the circumstances of 
 death. 
 
 Twenty-nine years ago, at eight o'clock on a 
 sabbath morning, with his second son bending 
 over him, his eldest and youngest being absent, 
 after a two-hours' illness of heart-disease, Dr. 
 Arnold entered into rest. 
 
 Just one week ago, at about nine o'clock on 
 a sabbath morning, with his second son and his 
 beloved pupils bending over him, his eldest 
 and youngest sons being absent, by a sudden 
 stroke of heart-disease, Dr. Taylor entered 
 into rest. Arnold and Taylor, perpaps, hand 
 in hand, sat together last sabbath at the feet of 
 the great Teacher whom they had loved and 
 served so well on earth. Oh, what converse 
 those two will hold together, whom sympathy 
 of aims and work and character have brought 
 into close companionship! Surely our loss is 
 his gain. 
 
 There was something martially stirring in 
 
97 
 
 the death of Arnold. The last enemy ap- 
 peared suddenly ; but he was met with the calm 
 pride of a hero. In the acutest pain, he yet 
 inquired into the nature of his disease with as 
 much precision and coolness as if he had been 
 questioning a pupil ; and his last look was 
 one of unutterable kindness. 
 
 There is something even more glorious and 
 beautiful in the death of Taylor. Literally in 
 the path of duty; with the last words he ever 
 spoke on earth " My duty lies with my pu- 
 pils" hardly passed his lips; doubtless with 
 his mind filled with thoughts suggested by 
 the duty and the day ; within the very temple 
 of industry and peace, where he had ministered 
 as the high priest; with his sorrowing pupils 
 around him ; he breathed his last upon their 
 breast, and dropped into the Everlasting Arms. 
 
 From yonder quiet grave, from that noble, 
 earnest life which has vanished from our earthly 
 gaze, comes to all this lesson, the divine 
 sacredness of duty. 
 
 Fidelity to duty was his watchword in life ; 
 " duty " was his last word; and a duty was his 
 
last work. Setting before us, as he did, the 
 praise of God as the end of our lives, and the 
 service of truth as the motive of endeavor, we 
 shall also share his glorious reward. 
 
 Another lesson of his life is the worth and 
 power of goodness. It is as a good man that 
 we can imitate him. His gifts, his opportuni- 
 ties, his attainments, may not be given to any 
 of us: his goodness and piety may be the in- 
 heritance of all. The success and eminence of 
 our beloved friend is an irrefutable argument 
 against the foolish notion that goodness is al- 
 lied to weakness, and is fatal to success. By 
 his noble example of simple goodness and 
 patient toil, he, being dead, yet speaketh. 
 
 Let his death teach us to live prepared for 
 the sudden sundering of domestic and social 
 ties, so that no remembrance of wounded love 
 may haunt us at open grave-sides ; let it teach 
 us to keep our hearts at peace with Him before 
 whose unveiled presence we may at any mo- 
 ment find ourselves ; let it teach us, that, while 
 we are providing for all the contingent events 
 of life by insuring ourselves against danger 
 and loss, we neglect not our foresight for eter- 
 
99 
 
 nity. Let multiplied warnings awake the over- 
 confident, in vigorous health, from their slum- 
 ber among the tombs ; " For in such an hour 
 as they think not the Son of man cometh." 
 
 How gloriously beautiful was the fitting end 
 that the Author of life had planned for such 
 a noble career ! Glory be to Jesus, who 
 brought life and immortality to light, and in 
 whom our departed one trusted, his career is 
 not ended ! it has only just begun. Glory be 
 to Jesus, that, though you did not see his 
 ascending spirit, nevertheless it did ascend, 
 and he stands transfigured in the presence of 
 the Lord of life, to die no more, but to be as 
 the angels of God forever! His home, our 
 school, our hearts, are made desolate ; but the 
 grave is desolate also. We go there to weep, 
 and the angel of the resurrection meets us ; 
 a voice comes to us, 'He is not here: he is 
 risen. Let us try to banish our thoughts of the 
 dark coffin and the lonely grave, and lift them 
 to our Father's house on high. The grave is 
 near ; but heaven is nearer. To think of the 
 joy of departed friends, to get, in imagination,, a 
 glimpse of their blissful state, will help to arm 
 
IOO 
 
 us with fortitude to bear our loss, and to urge 
 our faltering footsteps onward in the path they 
 trod before us. 
 
 God grant to the deeply afflicted among us 
 that faith and patience may have their perfect 
 work ! May they be supported by the thought 
 that now, as before, there is love, and love only, 
 in the heart of God for them; for God is love, 
 and he cannot be any thing else. May they 
 learn in stillness all the lessons he would teach 
 them ! Taught by sorrow, may they know bet- 
 ter than ever how blessed it is to give and to 
 receive sympathy ! When the passion of their 
 grief has passed away, may the enlargement of 
 their nature remain ! Cheered by the consola- 
 tions of the gospel, guided by the risen and 
 living Saviour, encouraged by his saints, may 
 they be elevated above their sorrows ; come 
 forth sweetened, ennobled, and purified from 
 the furnace ; and be found among those, who, 
 through much tribulation, have entered into 
 the kingdom of God ! 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
RESOLUTIONS 
 
 OF TH 
 
 STUDENTS OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY. 
 
 Whereas, it has pleased Divine Providence 
 to remove from our midst, by sudden death, 
 our beloved and respected principal, Samuel 
 H. Taylor, LL.D. : therefore be it 
 
 Resolved, That in his death we, the members 
 of Phillips Academy, mourn the loss of a faith- 
 ful friend and instructor, whose piety, justice, 
 and Christian example have endeared him to us 
 all. 
 
 Resolved, That we tender to his family our un- 
 feigned sympathy in this hour of their bereave- 
 ment, and assure them that his memory will 
 ever be cherished by us. 
 
 Resolved, That the school will manifest its re- 
 spect for the memory of the deceased, and its 
 
104 
 
 sympathy with the bereaved family, by wearing 
 the usual badge of mourning for thirty days, 
 and by attending the funeral in a body. 
 
 Resolved, That a committee of eight be ap- 
 pointed from the school to consult the family, 
 and make such arrangements as are deemed 
 necessary. And be it further 
 
 Resolved, That a copy of these Resolutions 
 be conveyed to the family of the deceased, and 
 be inserted in " The Boston Journal," and 
 " Lawrence American." 
 
RESOLUTIONS 
 
 ALUMNI OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY. 
 
 Resolved, That the alumni of Phillips Acad- 
 emy resident in Boston and its vicinity, assem- 
 bled on occasion of the sudden death of the 
 late principal, Samuel H. Taylor, LL.D., wish 
 hereby to express their sense of the irrepara- 
 ble loss which they and the whole commu- 
 nity have sustained in his decease, and their 
 appreciation of the great and invaluable ser- 
 vice which, as a teacher, scholar, editor, and 
 author, he has, during a life of energetic activ- 
 ity, rendered to the cause of liberty, education, 
 and culture in this country. 
 
 Resolved, That, along with the emotions of 
 grief caused by so great a loss, the memory of 
 his kindness of heart, his earnest interest in 
 
io6 
 
 the improvement and welfare of his pupils, his 
 conscientious fidelity and devotion to duty, 
 and his high Christian character, re-awakens 
 the liveliest feelings of affection, gratitude, and 
 reverence. 
 
 Resolved, That it is hereby recommended, 
 that, as a mark of respect, the alumni generally 
 attend his funeral. 
 
NOTE A. Address, p. 51. 
 
 After describing the death of Dr. Arnold, 
 Dean Stanley says, " What that Sunday was 
 in Rugby it is hard fully to represent, the 
 incredulity, the bewilderment, the agitating 
 inquiries for every detail, the blank, more 
 awful than sorrow, that prevailed through the 
 vacant services of that long and dreary day. . . . 
 It was naturally impossible for those who were 
 present [at his death] to adjust their recollec- 
 tions of what passed with precise exactness of 
 time or place." So was it after the death of 
 Dr. Taylor. The air was full of rumors ; and 
 no one could obtain certain information in 
 regard to the particular incidents of the scene. 
 Some of the closing sentences of the funeral 
 address have been modified, in order to make 
 them a more accurate narrative of the events 
 as they occurred. 
 
 It was about twenty minutes after nine 
 o'clock, on the stormy morning of the 29th of 
 January, 1871, that Dr. Taylor died on the 
 floor of the first story, near the chapel, of 
 
io8 
 
 Phillips Academy. In less than two minutes 
 after he fell, more than a hundred of his pupils 
 were gathered around him : fully two hundred 
 were soon assembled ; and, in about ten minutes 
 after his fall, he died in the arms of his son. 
 His funeral was solemnized at two o'clock on 
 the afternoon of the 2d of February, in the 
 large hall of the academy. He had reached 
 the age of sixty-three years, three months, 
 twenty-six days. At the biblical exercise on 
 the sabbath morning of his death, he was 
 intending to explain parts of the first and 
 second chapters of the Book of Acts. On the 
 previous Saturday noon, he conducted the 
 devotional exercises of his school for the last 
 time ; reading the hymn, 
 
 " Show pity, Lord ! O Lord ! forgive," - 
 
 the last stanzas which he ever perused. At the 
 morning devotions in the chapel, he read 
 the fourteenth chapter of Mark's Gospel, from 
 the forty-sixth verse to the end ; and com- 
 mented on verses 66-72, as compared with 
 verses 27-32. This was his last comment on 
 the Bible. 
 
Physicians differ and doubt in regard to the 
 cause of his sudden decease, but suppose it to 
 have been apoplexy, or a disease of the heart, 
 perhaps a rheumatic affection attacking that 
 organ. It is probable that he had anticipated 
 a sudden death; but he did not expect that it 
 would occur so soon. He had formed such 
 plans of study and authorship as would have 
 given him two years of arduous work. In 
 view of his probable expectation of a sudden 
 exit from life, we may detect the hidden em- 
 phasis of the words which he wrote in regard 
 to the death of his father-in-law, Rev. Edward 
 L. Parker of Derry, New Hampshire. 
 
 While returning from an evening service on 
 the sabbath day (July 14, 1850), this "model 
 pastor " was seen by one of his parishioners 
 " in the act of falling forward : " the parishioner 
 immediately " caught the- pastor in his arms ; 
 when he expired without a struggle, not breath- 
 ing more than once afterwards. Thus ended 
 the days of this faithful minister of the gospel. 
 It was a fitting time to die, in the midst of 
 his labors ; on the sabbath, after its duties 
 were all performed, and at the going-down of 
 
IO 
 
 the sun. Appropriately did one of his parish- 
 ioners remark, ' He served his Master faith- 
 fully all day, and went home to rest at night.' 
 It would have been gratifying to his friends, 
 could they have stood beside him as he 
 breathed out his life, and received from him 
 his last messages and parting blessing. But 
 * what God appoints is best.' They know how 
 he had lived, and they know what would have 
 been his message to them and to the people of 
 his charge, could he have spoken to them as he 
 was entering another world." Memoir, p. 48. 
 
1 1 1 
 
 NOTE B. Address, p. 29. 
 Reminiscences of a Pupil of Dr. Taylor. 
 
 " Dr. Taylor's manner towards us was digni- 
 fied ; an air of authority was around him ; and 
 we all felt that there was a strong hand over us. 
 To come under his influence was to move into 
 a new system of gravitation : every one, even 
 the dullest, felt that now he was expected to 
 accomplish something. He increased his au- 
 thority by maintaining a reserve towards us, 
 which, indeed, he seldom relaxed until we had 
 left his care as pupils, and met him as friends ; 
 when his manner became in the highest degree 
 frank and cordial. 
 
 " I vividly recall the old school-days of fifteen 
 years ago : the exercises were then held in the 
 Stone Academy, which has since been burned 
 to the ground. At half-past eight o'clock, we 
 assembled for morning prayers. The moment 
 that Dr. Taylor appeared at the door, we all 
 rose, and remained standing while he ascended 
 to the desk, and uttered the invocation. A 
 
I 12 
 
 chapter of the New Testament was then read 
 aloud by the scholars, each one reading in turn ; 
 and then the doctor, while sitting in his chair, 
 frequently gave us a clear and pungent exposi- 
 tion of some text in the morning lesson which 
 was adapted to our religious needs. I can 
 almost hear at this moment his heavy and 
 sonorous voice as he uttered some great truths 
 of revelation, and said, ' Notice these points, 
 young men : weigh them well." After offering 
 the morning prayer, he often arose and made 
 us an address; sometimes managing in a mas- 
 terly manner a case of discipline in the school, 
 sometimes urging us to greater diligence in 
 study, warning the thoughtless of the advan- 
 tages which they were neglecting, and painting 
 so vividly the regrets which in future years 
 awaited the idle, that we all felt them at the 
 very moment. Occasionally he threw the 
 whole weight of his character against some 
 foolish opinion which was taking possession of 
 our minds; and in a few moments chased it 
 away, as a fog is scattered by a sharp wind. 
 We listened to these remarks as though our 
 destiny depended upon them : at times, they 
 
were stirring and powerful, always racy, occa- 
 sionally tinged with humor. The Scotch-Irish 
 of Londonderry were noted for their wit, a gift 
 of which Dr. Taylor had a share ; not indeed 
 large, but large enough to smooth at times the 
 rigor of his discipline. During the delivery 
 of his most vehement passages, however, he 
 kept his eyes fixed, not upon us, but on his 
 desk ; a remnant of an early diffidence, which 
 never entirely left him. I imagine that he was 
 originally bashful in his temperament, until 
 experience and success rendered him bold. 
 
 " At the close of the devotional exercises, 
 those of us who belonged to the senior class 
 went to the Doctor's recitation-room, the 
 famous No. 9 of the building, and awaited his 
 arrival. The hour and a half of that morning 
 recitation all of us will remember until the day 
 of our death. As soon as he was heard at the 
 door, our mirth was hushed. He entered the 
 room with a firm and heavy tread, looking 
 straight before him ; opened the text-book, and 
 commenced the recitation. He first reviewed 
 the lesson of the previous day, and then com- 
 menced the advance. Upon the review, he 
 
was very rigid in his requirements : towards 
 mistakes in the advance, he was far more 
 lenient. In a few moments, every one felt 
 the spell of the Doctor's influence. We 
 seemed to leave the outside world, and 
 float off with him on a strong, irresisti- 
 ble current. The thoughts of the day de- 
 parted wholly from the mind ; we lived in 
 other ages, with our intellectual ances- 
 tors ; again we were wandering with Aeneas, 
 retreating with the ten thousand, burning with 
 Achilles in his wrath. We were called up 
 with great rapidity, and trained to tell promptly 
 and concisely what we knew. Woe to the boy 
 who professed to understand what he did not ! 
 No matter how smoothly he could repeat it, 
 the fraud was instantly detected, and exposed 
 without mercy. As I look back to these 
 exercises in the light of subsequent attain- 
 ments, they do not seem to me like recitations 
 in Greek or Latin, but lectures upon the sci- 
 ence and formation of language. The ease 
 with which Dr. Taylor handled an intricate 
 passage was astonishing. In a few words, he 
 pointed out the subject and predicate, detached 
 
the connecting clauses, and took the sentence 
 to pieces in a manner which would interest the 
 dullest. The minutest touches of the Greek 
 author, the position of the particles, the vari- 
 ous meanings of the article, the delicate meth- 
 ods, unknown to any modern tongue, by 
 which thought could be implied, yet not ex- 
 pressed, aroused his enthusiastic attention. I 
 heard him once say, that, on the whole, ' his 
 saddest task was to deal with men who at- 
 tended to generalities, and neglected details.' 
 The tenses of the Greek verb quivered with 
 life and meaning in his hands ; and he detect- 
 ed the subtile Greek idioms which enrich our 
 modern poets. On one occasion, he explained 
 at great length the peculiar power of the 
 Greek imperfect tense to paint or describe a 
 continued action ; and suddenly he darted his 
 exact meaning into our minds by quoting the 
 line from Milton : 
 
 He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend 
 Was moving toward the shore.' 
 
 " Dr. Taylor was not a poet ; but, when he 
 illustrated to us the great poets of antiquity, he 
 
n6 
 
 merged his being into theirs, and became a 
 poet for the time. He made us all hear the 
 murmur of the ' deep resounding sea,' ' and 
 the clang of the silver bow ; ' when he scanned 
 the words, ' Arma virumque cano,' they sound- 
 ed like the roar of the ocean. Nor did he let 
 the clear lunar beauty of the ' Anabasis' escape 
 our boyish attention. I heard him once draw 
 almost a volume of poetry from each word of 
 Virgil's terrific line, 
 
 ' Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum ; ' 
 
 and at another time I heard him repeat in a 
 transport of delight, 
 
 keivr] 6s K^ayyri ye^er' apyvpeoio flioto' 
 
 when suddenly his face changed, a new 
 thought darted across his mind, he repeated 
 Milton's line, - 
 
 ' Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime 
 Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl ; " 
 
 ' Gentlemen,' said he, ' there is more poetry 
 in those two lines than in all the rest of litera- 
 ture.' This union of grammatical minuteness 
 and poetic beauty in the teacher, the severe ten- 
 
sion of our own minds, the rapid change of our 
 thoughts, at one moment receiving an idea 
 from our instructor, the next instant imparting 
 to him our own, gave to his recitation-room an 
 indescribable excitement. After graduation, 
 some of his pupils enjoyed the instructions of 
 world-renowned men, who probably surpassed 
 Dr. Taylor in extent of attainment. I have ob- 
 served, however, that they often retained little 
 of those instructions, beyond the vague remem- 
 brance of meeting an eminent man at the 
 lecture-room, while they could take up Virgil 
 or Homer, and recall many of Dr. Taylor's 
 comments, as though uttered yesterday. 
 
 " Nor was he one who could be described, 
 upon the whole, as a man of eloquence. Yet 
 sometimes he spoke to us so earnestly, that he 
 seemed to become the mere means through 
 which the truth or the need of the hour im- 
 pressed itself upon us ; and never have I felt 
 more stirred by the address of any one. His 
 remarks upon our school compositions were ad- 
 mirable, and showed much 1 knowledge of the 
 author's art. On Wednesday afternoons, we 
 were required to declaim before the school. His 
 
comments upon our efforts were models of 
 criticism, and showed a great knowledge, not 
 only of our characters, but of the principles of 
 rhetoric. I remember once that a pupil recited 
 an extract from Webster, and charmed the 
 young audience by a declamation which was 
 really false and theatrical. The Doctor said to 
 him kindly, ' Granting your conception of the 
 piece, you have spoken admirably ; but I think 
 you have misunderstood the author's meaning. 
 Consider, first, what the author honestly meant ; 
 secondly, how you can express it.' I have 
 sometimes thought that Dr. Taylor's power was 
 due to a certain balance of his faculties, rather 
 than to the pre-eminence of any one talent. 
 Upon the basis of common sense and Saxon 
 energy of character there rested several powers, 
 which were always strong and available, though 
 no one of them was of the very highest order. 
 Without being a man of vast erudition, he was 
 an able scholar; though not a poet, he was 
 often poetic ; he was not an orator, but was oc- 
 casionally eloquent. 
 
 " What, then, is our estimate of Dr. Taylor 
 after a fifteen-years' interval, when the preju- 
 
dices and irritations of boyhood have passed 
 away ? Time develops his memory well : he 
 towers up grandly in the distance. The impres- 
 sion which he made upon our youth was no 
 illusion ; for his stature seems as large to the 
 man as it did to the boy : but he is now better 
 understood, and grows more genial with age, 
 as some buildings wear a softer outline when 
 seen in the distant perspective. The thought- 
 less and idle disliked him, undoubtedly; yet I 
 have noticed that, when they became responsi- 
 ble for boys, they often hastened to place them 
 under his care. Like the loadstone, with an 
 affinity for steel and iron, his character recog- 
 nized intuitively all that was good in other men. 
 I never saw in any mind such a sympathy with 
 the right intention of others, whether this in- 
 tention was struggling against obtuseness, 
 early disadvantages, or the pressure of poverty. 
 Naturally a ruler, he had a strong moral sense 
 of the necessity of training the young to 
 obedient habits. In his eye, subordination was 
 the first virtue of the pupil : he was the stern 
 foe of the proud and unyielding, and some- 
 times probably denied them real justice. To 
 
I2O 
 
 the contrite, however, his heart warmed ; and, to 
 save the penitent, he did at times risk the 
 authority of the school. I thought that a few 
 took advantage of this kindness, and persuaded 
 him to retain them in their places when his real 
 judgment was to dismiss them at once. With 
 a strong natural sense of the worth and mission 
 of the scholar, he longed to raise all his pupils 
 into this exalted class of men ; yet his sense 
 of duty controlled his passion, and he aimed 
 at the development of manhood rather than 
 the accumulation of learning in the pupil's 
 mind. Most of the complaints against him 
 have originated from the unworthy. In the 
 main, the public has decided in his favor ; and 
 it is unjust to weigh a few instances of con- 
 duct which seemed to be arbitrary, against 
 thirty years of constant and increasing success. 
 To expect perfection is always unwise. Some 
 teachers may have avoided his faults, but few 
 have surpassed his merits ; and the youth of 
 our land may be obliged to wait long before 
 another such instructor is raised up for their 
 
 service." 
 
121 
 
 SINCE the preceding was in type, another of 
 Dr. Taylor's pupils, a professor in a New-Eng- 
 land college, has written, " The strictness of 
 Dr. Taylor's discipline to a well - disposed stu- 
 dent was no more disagreeable than a bracing 
 north-west wind to sound lungs and a good 
 constitution. We knew that we must study 
 under him, and we were glad to be made to 
 form good habits of study. Many, like myself, 
 had such experience of his kindness in pov- 
 erty or sickness, that we came to understand 
 what a warm heart there always was beneath 
 his usual and natural reserve of manner. We 
 had our eyes opened to comprehend what and 
 how much was meant by * classical scholar- 
 ship : ' at least, the dullest of us saw ' men as 
 trees walking.' We were taught how to study. 
 We were compelled to some degree of accu- 
 racy and thoroughness in our lessons. He 
 gave us some insight into the meaning and 
 spirit of the works we studied. His render- 
 ings of words, phrases, passages of Virgil and 
 Sallust, could not be forgotten. Following, as 
 they so often did, his exposition of the syntax 
 
122 
 
 of a sentence, or of some allusion, or his reve- 
 lation of the radical meaning of a word, they 
 were ' as nails fastened by the masters of assem- 
 blies.' And it does seem to me that they were 
 models in the way of translation. They had 
 not only the merit of fidelity to the exact 
 meaning of the original; they were given in 
 English that was idiomatic, concise, elegant. 
 Had he chosen to edit Virgil, I believe he 
 would have resembled Conington in some of 
 his brightest excellences as an annotator and 
 translator. 
 
 " That he was a most patient workman upon 
 all the material put under his hands, however 
 unpromising, all his pupils can and must real- 
 ize in looking back; and appreciate the fact 
 that his power or genius to fashion and to train 
 equalled his rare scholarship, and his ability to 
 instruct." 
 
NOTE C. 
 
 Anticipating that this volume may reach 
 some friends not familiar with the circum- 
 stances attending the death of our revered 
 teacher, and wishing, also, to correct some 
 slight misstatements, we append the following 
 brief details. 
 
 There is little doubt, that, for the last few 
 years of Dr. Taylor's life, he was subject to a 
 rheumatic affection of the heart, and that this 
 was the immediate cause of his death. 
 
 Sabbath morning, Jan. 29, 1871, at five min- 
 utes after nine o'clock, Dr. Taylor left his 
 house for the academy, to conduct the biblical 
 exercise. 
 
 Though suffering from physical prostration, 
 devotion to duty strengthened him to face 
 snow and storm ; and he was enabled to enter 
 the building in which he so delighted to labor 
 for the young. But the lesson of that sabbath 
 morning we were not to learn from his lips in 
 the room consecrated to prayer. It may, in the 
 providence of God, be worked out in our lives. 
 
I2 4 
 
 Just before the bell ceased to toll, and while 
 many of the boys were yet coining in, he 
 walked a few steps into the large entry, stag- 
 gered towards the railing near the stairs, but, 
 failing to grasp it, sank heavily upon the floor; 
 and without a struggle his faithful spirit re- 
 turned to God who gave it. Every thing that 
 terror-stricken pupils could do was done ; but 
 neither the longing of friends nor the skill of 
 physicians could call back to life him who had 
 fallen at the post of duty. 
 
 Soon the scholars went quietly away; some 
 to church, some to their rooms, all bewildered. 
 An hour after, the body was carried to the 
 house. 
 
 That evening, Prof. Taylor of the seminary 
 met quite a number of the pupils and friends 
 in the prayer-room, and spent an hour in prayer 
 and appropriate remarks. 
 
 The committee of exigencies of the trustees 
 decided that Mr. Goldsmith, the Peabody in- 
 structor, should act temporarily as principal ; 
 and that the regular exercises of the school, 
 except the recitations of the senior class, should 
 continue till the day of the funeral. 
 
I2 5 
 
 Upon due consideration, it was thought best 
 to hold the funeral-services in the academy 
 hall. At noon, on Thursday, prayer was of- 
 fered at the house by Prof. Phelps ; and at 
 half-past twelve the remains were escorted by 
 the senior class to the chapel of the academy; 
 ten of the class acting as a guard of honor, and 
 having general charge of the remains. 
 
 In accordance with resolutions found on 
 page 103, adopted by the school, the prayer- 
 room, or chapel, was heavily draped in mourn- 
 ing. The black was relieved with white bor- 
 dering and white rosettes. At the west end 
 of the room there was a black background, like 
 the front of a marquee, over which, in white, 
 was the inscription, " We miss him." The 
 curtains were sufficiently drawn aside to show 
 a portrait of the deceased. In the middle of 
 the room stood the casket, covered with flowers 
 mingled with trailing smilax. 
 
 No. 9, his recitation-room, was draped in 
 a somewhat similar manner: the desk and 
 empty chair also bore emblems of mourning. 
 
 At an early hour, people commenced pour- 
 ing into the academy building; and by two 
 
126 
 
 o'clock, the time appointed for the funeral ser- 
 vices, the hall was crowded, many being com- 
 pelled to stand, though settees had been placed 
 in the aisles. From twelve to fifteen hundred 
 persons were present. Among the audience 
 were many alumni, and other gentlemen of dis- 
 tinction in various walks of life. The speaker's 
 desk was covered with black ; and on its front 
 were a cross and a crown of beautiful flowers. 
 
 The Lockhart Society of the Theological 
 Seminary began the services by singing. Prof. 
 J. L. Taylor next read the selections of Scrip- 
 ture found on page 55, and offered an earnest 
 prayer. The choir then sung - 
 
 " Why do we mourn departed friends ? " 
 
 after which the address by Prof. Park, which 
 opens this volume, was listened to with the 
 deepest interest. The closing prayer was 
 offered by Prof. Noyes of Dartmouth College ; 
 then an appropriate hymn was sung, and the 
 benediction pronounced ; after which a proces- 
 sion of great length was formed in front of the 
 building. 
 
 First the members of the school, next the 
 
127 
 
 hearse and relatives of the deceased. After the 
 relatives came the teachers, the senior class, 
 alumni, and other friends. The services at the 
 grave were very short, and were conducted by 
 Pres. Smith of Dartmouth College. 
 
 After the funeral, the alumni met at the 
 academy, and appointed a committee to take 
 into consideration the subject of procuring a 
 bust of the deceased, and erecting a monument 
 to his memory. 
 
 The resolutions found on page 105 were 
 adopted by the past students of Phillips Acad- 
 emy, at a meeting held in Boston on the 
 Wednesday preceding the day of the funeral. 
 
 Many thoughts not altogether foreign to the 
 subject have occurred to us while attempting 
 this sketch ; but it is not the place here to 
 moralize for our readers : we cannot, however, 
 refrain from giving expression to the prayer 
 that went up from at least one soul, as our 
 loved preceptor was seen buffeting the storm 
 of that memorable sabbath morning : " God 
 grant that a double portion of his spirit may 
 fall on us ! " 
 
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