Excerpt from A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of the Hon. John Quincy Adams: Delivered in the Rowe Street Baptist Church, February 27, 1848

It would not be right to allow such an occasion to pass unimproved. It hath its voice. To give it then a tongue, is wise in us. In this event god speaks. Great men are his gifts. He raises them up to achieve the purposes of his wisdom and his goodness. The mind of capacious intellect, of great forecast, of nice discernment, connecting the faculty of patient attention to details with that of Splendid philosophical general ization, illumined by varied knowledge, united to a heart of tender sensibility and of lofty courage, endow ed with the love of truth, honor, rectitude, together with well-balanced powers of conception and execution, is one of the noblest objects of his creation; and the fitting combination of events to give it ample verge and scope is all of his ordering. The removal of such gifted men from the earth in the prime of life or in the culmination of their manly strength, is often spoken of in the sacred Scripture as a severe judgment on any people as was the case when the Prophet of God announced a nation's doom by the threatening, The Lord doth take away from Judah and Jerusalem the stay and the staff, the judge and the prophet, the pru dent and the honorable man, the counsellor and the eloquent orator for then, it is added, children shall be their princes, and the people shall be oppressed.

When, therefore, we see a man, whom the people all delight to honor, in whose soul patriotism is an essential element of his inner life, whose tastes and gifts qualify him for high statesmanship, whose heart maintaineth its integrity, who walks upon the heights of power with serene self-command, who is unseduced by flattery and undazzled by bribes, who loves peace, and yet recoils not from the strife of stormy passions if the voice of duty call him to it, who blends with stern gigantic powers a sweet childlike simplicity, when we see such a man preserved to his country through times of trial, and yielding to her service the ardor of youth, the strength of manhood, the maturity of age, and at last, having passed beyond the bounds which have been set to the career of a mortal race, bowing cheerful assent to the majestic summons which bids him away from the scenes of his toil to a higher sphere of being, we cannot but acknowledge and adore the Providence which so long spared him to the world, and blessed his country with the priceless heritage of his character.

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