ing, to present a picturé of my father's own religious faith.

... "If place can add weight to those lessons which death teaches, here is the spot to speak them, for before that very altar where his body now reposes, eight-and-thirty years ago, our deceased friend first stood and there took upon himself the vows of a Christian minister. Before that altar the earthly tabernacle still is, but where is the spirit that assumed those vows? Gone, my brother, to that place where those vows were registered-gone to that higher tribunal where an account must be rendered of their performance. At that bar no human merit is known, no claim pleaded, save that atonement which God, through Christ, has accepted; and it is only as a pardoned sinner, pardoned through faith and sincere obedience, that the spirit which once dwelt in that tenantless clay can now stand before the bar of judgment. But with frail mortals like us, human virtues have their value because they have their influence; and while our holy Church teaches us to thank God for the good example of those who have finished their course in faith, we do not fear to trace not for eulogy but improvement, the Christian traits which ennobled the character of our venerable president. They are such as the world might possibly pass by without notice, but in the sight of God they are of great price; and, permit me to say, have often sunk into my heart, an instructive lesson, and spoke a wisdom beyond this world's teaching. They may be summed up in a few brief words: Singleness of heart; meekness of tongue; piety of spirit.

"Such was his calm and tranquil death, full of hope, answering well to the life he had lived. If asked on what that hope rested, I reply, where alone the hopes of dying man can rest, on the belief of the Atonement.

"In the latest conversation I had with him his language to me was, 'In the Atonement is all my comfort,' while he folded me in a dying embrace, which memory shall long live to recall. And where else, my brethren, can solid hope be built? In that trying hour, philosophy indeed may exhibit calmness, and fanaticism may display the raptures of an excited imagination, but hope, such as the unclouded soul can rest upon, rational, yet heartfelt, such hope nothing can give to the dying sinner — nothing, I believe, has ever given, but the reliance on an atonement. It is a want of the human heart, and, in whatever darkness that heart may be, it will, in its hour of need, grope until it find it. The pious Jew on his death-bed, clung to it in the types and figures of the Law; the pious heathen, trembling on the verge of eternity, searched it out even amid the abominations of his idolatry; and the pious Christian, amid all his blessings, blesses God chiefly for that cheering word, 'Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,' on this hope our venerated friend rested, and to him was the promise fulfilled of support in that trying hour. He has gone to his reward: let us honor his fair fame; let us love his memory; let us cherish the remembrance of his virtues; and let us imitate his Christian example. O

that we may die the death of the righteous, and that our last end may be like his."

A few days later a resolution of the board of trustees invested Professor McVickar with all the powers of the presidency of the college, "until the vacancy in that office shall be supplied, or until the further order of this board." From that time till the 9th of December there was, doubtless, much repetition of the feelings and the scenes which, twelve years previous, accompanied the filling of the vacant professorship of moral philosophy. But now as then, in spite of strong feelings, my father made no personal efforts to further his own election, and he even went so far in the opposite direction as to write to Bishop Hobart to free him from a pledge which some years previously he had voluntarily made to cast his vote in his favor under circumstances which had now occurred.

CHAPTER VIII.

OVERWORK AND FAILING HEALTH: 1829.

THE

HE election to fill the vacancy of president in Columbia College took place on the 9th of December, 1829. To learn the result we will have recourse, as usual, to our true but very partial witness, Miss Bard, whose comforting philosophy never allowed an unmitigated ill to befall those she loved.

"December 9.- This day our dear Mr. McVickar, his family and friends, have met with a great disappointment in his losing the election for president of Columbia College. Mr. Duer carried it by one vote. But I consider it a dispensation of Providence for good. Such a character as Mr. McVickar's, so pure, so religious, so moral, with talents, ability, and energy, yet withal so cool, so dispassionate, and selfpossessed, in every way so suited for the station, must have carried it, had not God designed him some higher blessing by withholding it."

And she was right. My father's own judgment soon told him so, and his future life confirmed it. Without entering on possible good that might have resulted to the college from his presidency, the effect of the official dignity upon himself must have been unfavorable. He was, even then, suffering alarm

ingly from overwork, and those who knew him best knew that nothing would have induced him, immediately after entering upon new duties as president, to ask leave of absence for relaxation and health. Yet the European tour, which he soon made, probably saved his life, or at least made of him almost a new man. Twelve years of steady book and routine labor, from the age of thirty, in a few prescribed courses of study, must have made, even in his elastic mind, deep grooves, which a few years more of unbroken work might have turned into unyielding ruts. But now, under the freedom soon to be his, he was to exchange books for men, and the lecture-room for the world, with the happiest possible result upon his whole character and after life. And finally, that ability to give more and more of his time to the distinct claims of his sacred profession, which increasing familiarity with the subjects of his class lectures allowed, would, as president of the college, have been quite inadmissible. Thus would the Church have lost the benefit of his wise and conciliatory counsels, and he himself been deprived in his declining years of his greatest happiness and richest source of comfort. We may, therefore, agree with his then venerable aunt, that "God designed him some higher blessing by withholding this." And often, in later years, have I heard him express deep thankfulness that his future had thus been ordered contrary to his own desires. Still it would be incorrect to say that this was not a great disappointment. Its depths may be measured from the following letter, which, as the