"the spirit is life because of righteousness." But death, with all its antecedents and consequents-the mournful harbingers of its approach and its power--the loathsome desolations of its victory and its reign, to the saint of God is no longer death. It is but dissolution-a departure. Sad in its aspects and accompaniments, it is nevertheless a release. A pillar of cloud and fire, its shadows all fall on this side the grave; beyond, all is light, and life, and glory. We die unto the Lord,--and may I not add for the Lord. The death of the good preaches terror to the wicked. "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the sinner and the ungodly appear?" Oh! we ask not "Enoch's rapturous flight, nor Elijah's fiery steeds" to bear us away, if by dying we may help to convince the world of sin and judgment. We would do good even in death. As we wish to live to serve him "who loved us," so would we die to make his glory known" the justice and the grace."

"Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace." "The chamber where the good man meets his fate" is a scene of glory. See his patience under suffering; the calm submission, and often the joy unutterable. Is this human fortitude; the stoicism of a blind philosophy; the outflashings of sentiment and fancy? No, no. It is the fulfilment of promise; grace abounds. It is the conviction that the judge of all the earth will do right. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." It is the knowledge of the Redeemer in his pardoning mercy, his purifying spirit, and in the glory soon to be revealed in its fullness and its eternity. It is an argument for religion, that it ends well. "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." The prophet's prayer finds an echo in every heart not lost to hope and heaven. Who that looks upon a dying scene, where Christianity wreathes the pale face with smiles of rapture, and inspires the failing tongue to utter its last articulations in the dialect of heaven, does not breathe from the inmost soul the wish-even so may I meet the last enemy?

In life, being strong in faith, we give glory to God; so in the final struggle He is glorified in us and by us. "These all died in faith." immortal record! epitaph of the good, and interpreter of their doom. Living and dying, "we are the Lord's "-His property-absolutely, in every change, walking upon the earth and sleeping upon its bosom. He made us, and He loves us. He is "not ashamed to be called" our God. Life, probation, and death, are all ministers employed by Him

to do us good. If He prolong our days, it is that we may serve Him and our generation by the will of God. If He afflicts us, it is "for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. If He call us hence, it is that we may "see Him as He is, and be like him forever." Our bodies may inhabit the house appointed for all the living, and our very name perish from the records of time, but He looks down and "watches all our dust till He shall bid it rise." We are the Lord's-the jewels of his kingdom, and the travail of his soul. He hath said it, and it shall stand fast" They shall be mine"--"Because I live, they shall live also." "We are the Lord's." Let us rejoice in our relationship, and walk worthy of our high descent and our immortal destiny.

The principle and spirit of the text were beautifully exemplified in the life and death of our beloved brother, Bishop Capers. I have never known a man of more simple, single-hearted, uncalculating devotion. Born of God while yet a youth, his life was consecrated unreservedly to the service of Christ and his Church. Through all the changes of his career, youth, maturity and age; single, married, and surrounded by sons and daughters; on circuits, stations and districts; a deacon, an elder and a bishop; he exhibited the same steady, onward devotion; a man of God, of faith, of zeal. His steadfast purpose never faltered; no change of fortune modified the entireness of his dedication; no accumulation of cares relaxed his efforts to do good. He lived unto the Lord. Absence from home might entail loss, afflict feeling, tax affection; no matter, he had set his heart within him to finish his course with joy, and the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. On more than one occasion he might have secured to his family a home rich in comforts, and to himself honors and emoluments, by separating himself from the itinerancy he loved, and consenting to serve a people who proved their esteem by the largeness of their offered liberality. But attached to our Church and its economy, by conviction and choice, salary was no temptation to leave it, or even to modify his relation to it; and, in the face of all the sacrifices and privations and labors of a travelling Methodist preacher, he declined a city home and a well-filled purse.

My acquaintance with our dear departed brother (I ought to call him father) began while I was but a boy, and he was in the meridian of his strength, and the blaze of a renown such as few attain. The

impressions made upon me then by his humble manner, his sanctified conversation, and his unwearied labors, were fully justified by the familiarity of intercourse in after years. He seemed to me to be dead to the world, its gains and honors, and alive only to the glory of God and the salvation of souls. While his name was upon every tongue, and crowds were rushing from appointment to appointment, and the whole country was in a fever of curiosity and admiration, he seemed to shrink from fame; and the exultation by which a common mind and a common heart would have been lifted up, in his case was lost in an overwhelming sense of the responsibility his position entailed. He was one of the very few men I have known who was not injured in his piety and preaching by great popularity. To seek popularity as an object, in a minister is a crime-to bear it meekly when it comes unsought, is a virtue of rarest value.

This virtue characterized, distinguished Wm. Capers in the freshness of his youth, the glory of his noon, and in the mellow ripeness of his sanctified old age. He was clothed with humility. It was his beauty and his strength. The praise even of the lowly oppressed him. Courted and caressed by the rich, the great, the mighty in the land, he shrunk from their embrace, lest he might seem to others to be seeking great things for himself. His faith was never hindered by seeking the honor of men; his fidelity never compromised by the adulation of the Church or the world. Who ever heard him tell of the mighty works he had done; the great sermons he had preached; the wondrous revivals he had carried on? Who ever saw in his air the conceit of success, or detected in his language the self-gratulation of a praiseworthy deed? He was not the hero of his narratives, nor did he talk to make the simple wonder, or the great admire. Like Paul, whose visit to the third heaven was kept a secret for fourteen years, and revealed at last only to vindicate his apostleship, he said but little of his own experience, save in the retirement of private life, to the ear of intimate companionship. Astonishingly fluent, he talked much, but always well. He never forfeited in private the reputation he had made in public. Cheerful without levity, and easy without familiarity, he never degraded the minister into the trifler, nor reproached the sanctity of his profession by foolish talking and jesting, which are not convenient. As a man, his nature was alive and gushing with all noble, generous impulses; kind, affectionate, full of sympathy, he rejoiced with them that rejoiced, and wept with them

that wept. In his family, gentle without weakness, and fond without improper indulgence. His wife, herself a model woman, revered while she loved, and honored while she served. His children, feeling themselves favored of Heaven in the virtues of such a father, obeyed his commands, consulted his wishes, and felt his smile to be a meed and a recompense. No man loved his children more. He regretted in the last hour that so few of them were present, and yet rejoiced that he had seen them so recently. Lovely family-children honored in their parents, and parents honored in their children. God's best blessing continue with them to the latest generation!

It is not amiss to say that Bishop Capers was in manners a gentleman, bland, courtly, refined. In him the polish of the courtier and the simplicity of the saint beautifully blended. His politeness did not consist in the formalities and ceremonies which, in certain circles, are dignified as the insignia of the well-bred and the fashionable; but it was the outgushing of a heart which knew no rule but the promptings of its own benevolence. It was the outward expression of an inward disposition; a mode of action which a loving spirit instinctively prescribed; the free, untaught, unconstrained operation of Christian courtesy. In the parlor and the pulpit, the street and the sanctuary, he was minutely regardful of the proprieties of life; and while the simplest rustic found no affectation, the fastidious critic discovered no fault.

I must not omit to mention his excellence in prayer. Whether we consider his power as a gift or a grace, he surpassed most men. In his devotions there was so much of the evangelical element, that a heathen man might have learned the plan of salvation from any one of his public exercises. On his knees he knew nothing but Christ. The cross was his all-prevailing plea. He urged it with fervor, affection, and faith. He was himself an intercessor, filled with yearning sympathies for his fellow-men. And sometimes his power with God would remind us of Jacob and the Angel-of Israel and his blessing.

To describe him as a preacher belongs rather to his biographer than to the sketch of a funeral discourse. He was a scribe well instructed in the kingdom of God; an able minister of the New Testament. He brought forth out of his treasure things new and old. Rich in thought, fertile in matter, there was no sameness in his discourses, even when he preached from the same text-which he often did. I never heard him use the same illustration twice, or falter for a word. Copious in

language, apt in selection, and inexhaustible in variety, he was always ready and always new. It is difficult to classify his style as a preacher. His sermons were not essays nor expositions, nor were they narratives with reflections interspersed, nor yet topical exactly; still, all these, except the first, were sometimes mingled by him. Perhaps the word textual will fit his manner best. His sermons grew out of his texts, not by formal divisions, but by an artistic development, a verbal evolution of their meaning. Under his peculiar management, many a verse or passage to the untrained eye dark, or at least obscure, became instructive, beautiful, most interesting. Gifted with wonderful versatility and readiness, he excelled all I ever knew in adapting his text and discourse, on a sudden call, to all that was peculiar on the occasion. He often awakened attention by the announcement of a verse which none but he would ever have chosen. In this, however, he was not fanciful or eccentric, but simply obeyed the impulse of a mind unique in its conceptions and modes of thought. In thought, language, style, he was original, yet without eccentricity; called no man master, and yet violated no rule of the books; always accurate, always simple, but elegant in his simplicity. His sermons were often ornate; but there was no florid coloring; no exuberance; no glare. There was a delightful propriety, a minute beauty, a neat, chaste, graceful arrangement of every part. His flowers were not artificial; they all had roots, and they were redolent with the morning dew; fresh and fragrant as a vernal garden in the early day.

It is but just to say that his pulpit efforts were very unequal; yet in his driest, darkest moods, he was William Capers-all the mental characteristics of the man stood forth; a familiar acquaintance could not fail to recognize them. He possessed the singular faculty of speaking with fluency, grace, and propriety, when his mind was barren and empty, and his hearers listened well pleased, even when they got nothing to carry away. But at other times he was transfigured -his very form dilated-his eye beamed with celestial beauty, soft with the light of love, yet radiant with the joy of his rapt and ravished spirit, and his voice, mellowed by emotion, spell-bound while it inspired the hearing multitude. When the Spirit of the Lord God was upon him-when the angel touched his lips with a coal from the altar-oh! he was a charming preacher. I have heard him when the consolations of the gospel distilled from his tongue as honey from the rock, and the message of salvation came down like the angelic