prerogative of converting weakness into strength, and of giving to
Humility the influence of Power. There is not a feature in the
character, there is hardly an action in the life of this exemplary
personage, that does not mark him as a true servant of CHRIST. And may
we not presume the blessed Author of our faith, in supplying us in these
dissolute times with a recent example of such astonishing and unlimited
beneficence, is graciously pleased to afford us a new motive to prize
and to cherish that animating faith, which could form, in an age like
the present, a character so wonderfully entitled to the veneration of
the world? The spirit of Christianity is so visible in the conduct of
HOWARD, that the prime objects of his attention might be thought to have
been suggested to him by the very words in which our blessed Lord
announces to the heirs of eternal glory the source of their
beatitude--'Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungry, and ye
gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and
ye took me in; naked, and ye cloathed me; I was sick, and ye visited me;
I was in prison, and ye came unto me.'

"Is it possible for us, my Brethren, to recall to our memory these holy
words without feeling at the same time, in the most forcible degree, all
the Christian merits of HOWARD? Can we fail to admire and to venerate
the unexampled ardour, purity, and perseverance, with which he exercised
the peculiar virtue so distinguished by our Lord?--While we behold him
sublimely pre-eminent in this Christian perfection, shall we not cherish
the delightful idea, that his heavenly rewards will be finally adequate
to his unrivaled labours on earth? Shall not those who have loved him
exult in the persuasion, that in that great and aweful day, when the
living and the dead are to receive their everlasting doom; when the
princes and the great ones of the earth may be confronted with those