He impressed me with the fact that he
was nearly through his earthly journey. Going to my Church that evening
to speak at our young peoples' anniversary, he delivered the last
address of his public life. While seated at the beginning of the
exercises, his modesty seemed to overcome him, and he said: "I am not
prepared to address such a magnificent audience as that. Can not you get
somebody else to speak? I wish you would." "O no," I said, "these people
came to hear Henry Wilson." He placed a chair in the center of the
platform to lean on. Not knowing he had put it in that position, I
removed it twice. Then he whispered to me, saying: "Why do you remove
that chair? I want it to lean on." The fact was, his physical strength
was gone. When he arose his bands and knees trembled with excitement,
and the more so as the entire audience arose and cheered him. One hand
on the top of the chair, he stood for half an hour, saying useful
things, and, among others, these words: "I hear men sometimes say, when
a man writes his name on the records of a visible Church, that he had
better let other things alone, especially public affairs. I am not a
believer in that Christianity which hides itself away. I believe in that
robust Christianity that goes right out in God's world and works. If
there ever was a time in our country, that time is now, when the young
men of this country should reflect and act according to the teachings of
God's holy Word, and attempt to purify, lift up, and carry our country
onward and forward, so that it shall be in practice what it is in
theory--the great leading Christian nation of the globe.
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