without hope that I undertook the operation. There was, however, a chance for him, perhaps, and I felt that it was my duty to give it to him. He was my tutor at Yale College for one term, but I did not recall this till after his death. He was very brave, so brave that I commented upon it to several before I knew who he was. I was called out of town soon after the operation, and did not return till he had passed away. I will ask Dr. Bloodgood, who was in charge of Dr. Lawrence, to write you.

Dr. Bloodgood adds:-"It is with pleasure and much sadness that I write you,—pleasure that I can warm a mother's heart with the knowledge that her son met his death with so much calmness and courage; sadness, that such a useful life should have to end while there was yet so much to be done. After the operation, he asked me to telegraph you, if we considered his condition dangerous. On the third day, he asked me if he could live. I told him he was a very sick man. Whatever his sufferings were, in mind or body, we could not tell. He was always calm, patient, resigned, and his end surely exemplified that comforting saying, that death is swallowed up in victory."

Edward's last service in the church was the preparatory lecture on Wednesday evening, November 1st, ten days before he left these earthly scenes. Could he have had an unconscious prescience that it was the last time he should speak to his beloved people? Many have spoken of that discourse as a remarkable one, affecting them deeply.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

RESTS HE NOW.

NOT THIS!

"What, many times I musing asked, is man,
If grief and care

Keep far from him? he knows not what he can,
What cannot bear.

He, till the fire hath purged him, doth remain
Mixed all with dross:

To lack the loving discipline of pain
Were endless loss.

Yet when my Lord did ask me on what side
I were content

The grief whereby I must be purified,
To me were sent,

As each imagined anguish did appear,
Each withering bliss

Before my soul, I cried, 'Oh! spare me here;
Oh, not, not this!'

Like one that having need of, deep within,
The surgeon's knife,

Would hardly bear that it should graze the skin,
Though for his life.

Nay then but he, who best doth understand
Both what we need

And what can bear, did take my case in hand,
Nor crying heed."

It was Edward's custom to put in his weekly bulletin some choice selection of poetry. In one of his latest he was led to insert the above poem. Was it some unconscious premonition that moved him thus in advance to voice the feelings of his friends, and possibly his own? Who can tell?

Every one who has known sorrow, has known also the consolation that comes from the sympathy of friends. Of such consolation those bereaved by this sudden blow had no lack. The first written words of sympathy came from a Catholic priest of the city, Father Starr, at one time Edward's fellow-traveller on the way to Chicago.

My Dear Madam:

Will you pardon me for intruding upon your notice at this time, to offer you my sincerest condolence upon the death of your esteemed son, Dr. Lawrence, between whom and myself very pleasant relations have existed. I pray God to help you in bearing the irreparable loss which you have sustained. It is very like an impertinence to tell you that he has endeared himself to hosts of people in this city, outside the field of his own ministrations. I am Very truly yours,

Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore, Nov. 11th, 1893.

Wm. E. Starr.

From the letters from Manchester, where Edward had been expected to make his promised visit at about this time, a few extracts are given:

We had been looking forward to his visit with increasing delight. How soon was our joy turned into sorrow! As we gathered for prayer that Friday evening, we were a stricken and bereaved company, with hearts too full for utterance. A grasp of the hand and a few words, mingled with tears, told our sorrow! It was a sad service, and those dear to him were not forgotten.

One of the deacons said, last evening, that as he had met our people on the street in the afternoon, they looked as though they had lost their dearest friend. "Our pastor has passed away,' was the feeling which seemed to fill every heart. At the prayer meeting everything in song and prayer and word was permeated with the one thought of our great loss, and the desire to know what lessons God would teach us thereby. One of our choicest young men led the meeting, reading the passage referring to Peter's deliverance from prison, and spoke of the earnestness with which the church had been praying for Dr. Lawrence's recovery. "But," said he, "the angel has indeed delivered him from prison, the gates have opened for him into the Celestial City, and he will no more return to his friends." Many wept during the service, and it seemed as though we could not have felt much worse if he had been actually our pastor. It is marvellous what a hold he had gained upon the hearts even of those who had never seen him. All who met him were wonderfully attracted. I count it a blessed privilege that I was permitted to hear him preach and to come for a brief space within the influence of the spiritual atmosphere that surrounded him.

I write to you in the name of our bitterly disappointed and griefstricken church. We are indeed under a heavy cloud, yet our tears

fall not alone for ourselves. We realize that another church is mourning for a dear and faithful pastor with an appreciation which is the growth of years. And brief as our acquaintance with Dr. Lawrence had been, his reverential love for his mother was well known to us, making it possible to understand something of her feeling at the loss of such a son. And we remember the sister, and another whom we hoped to welcome among us to be our friend and helper. The sense of personal bereavement manifested by our people is almost surprising, and expressions of deep regret come to us from other churches, and from some but little interested in any church, who realize what our city would have gained in such a man. He is as truly a part of the history of our church-life as though he had labored among us. We have felt and shall feel his influence, and it has been good for us to have had even this brief connection with him. Our church is better for it I am sure, and while the tender and harmonious spirit which now prevails will lead us to welcome kindly the one whom the Lord may send us, we shall never forget Dr. Lawrence.

"The more I learn of the feeling of the people towards Dr. Lawrence, the more mysterious it seems that he should have been taken from us. One gentleman who has not attended our church and rarely went into any church, met Dr. Lawrence for a moment when he was here and was so strongly attracted towards him that when the news of his death came, he said, 'I do not know when I have felt anything as I do this.'

"Another, who had not seen him and who has not been a church-goer for several years, remarked that when Dr. Lawrence came, he meant to come to church every Sunday. These are only samples of the interest he aroused even among those not Christians or even church-goers. He was a man of wonderful personal magnetism. A reporter was heard to say that he did not know when the death of one so little known here had elicited such general expressions of sorrow."

Meantime from all quarters came letters and telegrams, while many outside of his church, as well as his own people, called to offer sympathy. Among these was his friend, Professor Peabody of Cambridge, who, as intimated in his letter, was delivering lectures on Sociology at Johns Hopkins University.

The question, so unexpected, came to his mother, where should be the burial? He had written some years before, in answer to her inquiries:-"As to what you say about securing a lot in the cemetery, I feel, with father, that it matters little where this body is laid when I have done with it. As for the grave, we do not care where it is. Do not be concerned to visit the spot where my body crumbles, for I shall not be there."

But it was a matter of importance to his friends, and a lot had been procured in the Andover Hill cemetery, where were the graves of many relatives, including his grandfather, his uncle, Leonard Woods, his father and his sister Carrie. And his friends there naturally inferred that his burial place would be in his father's lot, with his name inscribed on his father's family monument. There was no time for consultation, but his mother felt, instinctively, that his grave should be in Greenmount, where not only his own people, but the poor all over the city whom he had come to know so well, could visit it. And it was therefore arranged that it should be in Mr. Nunn's family lot.

The body was embalmed and taken to the church parlor, adjoining his study, the room being beautifully decorated with flowers. No one who saw the weeping visitors that thronged around the casket from morning till night, could doubt the place that Edward held in the hearts of the community. An illustration is given in the following letter from Miss Amelia Knipp:

Many times have I thought of writing to you of those last few days at the church, but it has seemed impossible to express one-half of the loving, touching actions of those hours. It was more what was done than any words that were spoken, that showed the love the people bore for Mr. Lawrence.

One lady, whose granddaughter had recently died, came and looking down at your son, with tears in her eyes, said, "He did not think when he was comforting us how soon he would be with our child." Then she told me of his coming to them when they were nearly heartbroken and saying, "She is one of the flowers that God has plucked." To feel that God wanted their child for his garden was the comfort that family needed. The next day the father of the little girl