I will not weary and chill you, Brethren, with those ordinary biographical details with the chief of which you are already familiar, and which in another way and place will all be gathered and preserved. The thought that is uppermost in all our minds to-day, is that of the godly man whose serene old age has passed into the heavenly life; of the honored Prelate, oldest in consecration in all our now widely spread communion, who has laid down his earthly mitre, that he may receive "a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand." His early life was full with the promise of the later; the youth was the fair pledge of the coming manhood. Two things, as it seems to me, stand out from these early years with a prominence that challenges attention. There was, first, the same gentle, thoughtful kindness, smoothing difficulties and restoring harmony and peace, that developed into so marked an element of the later character. He was known among his fellows, even then, as a peacemaker; and the very appellation which boyish affection, with the keen instinct that it often shows, bestowed upon him, marks the way in which this characteristic forced itself on the attention. But there was, besides, that capacity for rapid and ready acquirement and adaptation, which we trace so clearly in after years. At the age of fifteen, when as yet he had received no other education than that afforded by a common country school, he took charge of a school himself, and as he says,--with characteristic modesty--"succeeded in securing the respect of his former schoolmates." Who can doubt that the same marked qualities, the same wonderful balance, that made his Episcopate all it was, worked the same result in this so difficult and so contracted field of duty? Who does not believe that he might have spoken of affection as well as of respect? Who does not see the foreshadowing of the man in this little picture of the boy's every day life? It was not till he had nearly reached his majority that he decided to enter on a collegiate life. And then his preparation was all made in less than two years' time. Nor could it have been a hasty, patched-up preparation; for he held his place as a leader still, and when his college life was ended, stood first among his fellows. Such were the marks of his early years; how full of promise for, how exactly answered by, his future ones. The years of preparation ended, the choice of the life work came next, and this was to be the work of the Ministry; for to that his heart and purpose had long been turning. Had his earliest plans been carried out, he would, probably, have lived and labored in another Communion than our own, and his honored name and fragrant memory could never have been ours. But now began a train of circumstances, so manifestly ordered by the Providence of God, that we can scarcely refuse to see in them, nay rather, that we may rejoice to see in them, the divinely arranged training for the great work for which God had appointed him.