Project Canterbury Niobrara Sermon Preached at the Consecration of
William Hobart Hare, S.T.D.,
As Missionary Bishop of NiobraraBy Right Rev. Henry B. Whipple, D.D. at St. Luke's Church, Philadelphia
January 9th, 1873.Philadelphia: M'Calla & Stavely, 1873.
"ALL power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."--St. Matthew's Gospel, xxviii. 18, 19, 20.
"And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.--Acts xxviii. 30, 31.
Beloved brethren, may I ask you to forget this gathered congregation, this beautiful service, this company of Bishops and Clergy? I would take you back over the path of years to the Mount of Olives. It stood eighteen hundred years ago as it does to-day, beautiful in its grandeur, the scene of the most momentous transactions between God and man. Nestling at its foot is the Garden of Gethsemane, the scene of the Saviour's agony. Over against it is Mount Calvary, where He hung upon the torturing cross. Across the Valley of Kedron, between the two, is Jerusalem, filled with its thronging multitudes and with its Temple, from which the glory of God has departed. On the other side of the mountain is Bethany, which has one home where Jesus was always a welcome guest. Yonder is the foot-path so often pressed by His holy feet, the scene of His triumphal entry and His weeping over apostate Jerusalem. To this sacred place, henceforth to be forever hallowed as the place of His Ascension, our Lord has called His Apostles. In His hands and feet are the prints of the nail, and the mark of the spear is in His wounded side. The work of redemption is finished. The atonement for sin is completed. He has conquered death. He now stands for the last time on the earth in His bodily presence with His apostles who have come here to receive His farewell words. What a hush of expectation! What eagerness to receive His message! The Son of God is about to ascend unto the Father in the presence of His angels who have come to welcome their King. He whom the Apostles have followed in His lowliness and humility now reveals Himself to them as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." He first asserts His rightful authority as the One who alone has the right to govern those whom He has created and redeemed, and then He appoints that college of Apostles as His ambassadors. It is His delegated authority, not given to any one of His apostles, but committed unto all and by them to be handed on until He who gave it shall come to receive it as the Judge of the quick and the dead. More wonderful are the words in which He conveys this authority. "As my Father sent me, so send I you." They were commissioned to teach the people of every tongue and clime and kindred the story of God's love; they were to receive men into His kingdom, and teach these subjects of that kingdom to observe all the things commanded by Christ, its King. He made the authority sure by the pledge of His presence. "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Who can measure such words? And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, which said: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven? this same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." Who can imagine the awe of the Apostles? What thoughts stir the deep of every heart? No marvel that they go to the upper chamber where He had so often met with them, and continue in prayer for the coming of the Holy Ghost to prepare them to fulfil this awful trust. The Holy Ghost came on the day of Pentecost. It was by His mighty power that men were made citizens of the Kingdom of God. It was by the Holy Ghost that their Lord became the Son of man, and now by the Holy Ghost the sons of men become the children of God.
It was through the power of the Holy Ghost that these children of God received of the nature of their King and Mediator at the right hand of God.
2. The Apostles went everywhere "preaching the Kingdom of God." To the eye of man there was nothing more than a few lowly men going two and two, telling of God's love and pouring water upon willing listeners and breaking bread with benediction. Yet, wherever they went, the Kingdom of God went also. The Gospel they preached was no new religious philosophy. It was not a mere aggregate of religious doctrine. It presented to all men a real King and a real Kingdom. It told them of a risen and ascended Lord, who had made the trial of human sorrow, and knew the burdens which brought furrows to the cheek and deeper lines of suffering to the heart. It told them of a real Son of Man who loved them, who pitied them, who felt for them, and of a Son of God who was able and willing to help them. The Gospel which the Apostles preached centered in a person. It presented to all men a religion of fact. It gave to them for the theories of philosophy, the realities of a Kingdom of God on earth, which had come with the coming of the Son of God, its King. The Gospel cured the alienations, and strifes and discords of a warring world by a new brotherhood. It did not uproot human relations. It did not subvert the order of society. It interfered with no social ties. It had a message for Caesar's household as it had for the fisherman of Galilee. It came to kings and to subjects, to masters and to servants, to fathers and to children, to philosophers in the academy, and to trafficers in the market, and it brought to each one an Evangel, which hallowed and consecrated all other ties. It gave to men citizenship and kinship with an unseen King, and brotherhood with each other in His kingdom. The sacrifices they made to preach the Gospel and the free-will offerings of all possessions for the members of that kingdom, were the natural fruit of faith in their King. Who could believe that Christ was very God, and that they were own brothers in Him, and not be willing to give up all for that Brother's sake? The Church knew that the Apostles bore God's authority, and so they "continued steadfast in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and prayer."
It was a religion of fact and not of theory. They were too near the Cross to doubt the words of Jesus. The marvellous spread of the Gospel was the simple result of Apostolic faith and Apostolic work. The unity of the Church was the natural result of union with Christ. To divide the Church was to bring schism into the body of Christ. And so an Apostle said to those who made divisions, "Is Christ divided?" The key-note of all preaching was, "One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Union with Christ awakened every sinless sympathy in Christian hearts. The tie which bound them to God united them to each other, and so it became a motto among the heathen, "See how these Christians love one another."
The world then, as now, was weary with philosophy. It groaned under its burden of- sin and sorrow and death. It asked for help. The Gospel met all men alike. It told men the story of Christ's life, the sacrifice of His death, His resurrection and ascension. It pointed the weary, aching heart to a real Christ and Saviour. It offered to all men alike the boon of citizenship in His Kingdom. It solved the mysteries around every man's feet. It gave him a Father in Heaven and brotherhood on the earth. It had the same message for the philosopher which it had for the fisherman, for he was a man and had the heart of a man, and so he gave up the philosophy of men for the wisdom of God.
3. More than eighteen centuries have passed away, almost two thousand years. It was two thousand years to the Deluge. It was two thousand years to the Destruction of Jerusalem; the first, the second, the third watch of the night; the first, the second and the third year of our Lord's ministry; the first, the second and third day He lay in the grave. Each period of two thousand years hedged in by its own awful judgments. No marvel that the wisest and holiest interpreters of prophecy have believed that we were living in the eventide of the world's history. It brings up the solemn question of our Lord: "When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" We have no heart to tell the story. The Church which Apostles planted with tears and watered with their blood is torn asunder in strife. In Christian lands the multitude disown and deny Christ. Eight hundred millions of human souls are living in heathen darkness. The whole land is shattered into sects. America has more separate religious organizations than there were disciples in the upper chamber. In every village a dozen sects fetter each other's work. We try to apologize for this, but we know in our hearts that our wretched divisions are the only reason why we cannot found Christian schools and hospitals and houses of mercy beside every Church. We know, despite our hopefulness, that this divided Christianity cannot conquer the world. We are hardly keeping our hold on the population at home. The Church is fettered by the spirit of the world and makes its holy places the abode of the well-to-do people of good society. We say that the Church is a brotherhood; that the king and the peasant are own brothers in Jesus Christ, but we know the world does not believe us. What sight is so touching as to see a sun-burned son of toil kneeling beside the font to receive for himself or his child citizenship in the Kingdom of God? and this feeling is changed to awe when we read in the Revelation of God, "As many of you as have been baptized unto Christ have put on Christ." How often is this child of God made to feel that he is a stranger in the house of his Father! The world loses its faith in the Church when it ceases to be the refuge of the weary and broken of heart. Infidelity sneers at the Gospel as an effete superstition. Science, falsely so called, challenges with its human opinions the Revelation of God. Strange delusions sweep over the land, dragging after them thousands of immortal souls. Our rities are appalled by crimes against God and man, which go unpunished. Class is being arrayed against class; on the one hand extravagance and luxury, and on the other jealousy and hatred, and most sorrowful of all, in this boasted Nineteenth Century, five hundred millions of souls, for whom Christ died, will go down to death without having so much as heard that there was a Saviour. We are all paying the penalty of schism. We see its fruits in neglected childhood, in the loss of Christian homes, in the growth of sin and vice, and in wide-spread sin and unbelief. It will heal no heart-burnings to tell who is at fault. It will not bring back unity to praise ourselves and condemn others. This is no time to go over the old recriminations. If one has sinned by self-will, the other has sinned as deeply by lack of charity and love. The whole Church of God groans under the burden of our unhappy divisions, and we feel it the more keenly because at this very .time the Providence of God has opened the whole world to Christian effort. China, India, Japan, Africa, the isles of the sea, are all open to our feet. The world is ringing in our ears a plea for help-not in words, but by the piteous sight of millions going down to death without the knowledge of Christ. There never was a time when God has given such untold wealth to Christian men, as if He had prepared all things for the time when "a nation shall be born in a day."
Have we a real King in Heaven who, day by day, looks down on the world which He has redeemed and sees His servants at such a time only anxious to gather wealth or secure station? Is it not a time for searchings of hearts? for deep repentance? for earnest prayer? "for the Kingdom of Heaven to suffer violence, and the violent to take it by force?"
The world has another remedy. It is to give up definite faith, to adopt the motto "It matters not what a man believes, if he is only honest." The loss of a well-grounded faith to an immortal man is the loss of everything. Does it make no difference to a man dying with thirst whether yonder is a mirage with the picture of a brook and fountain, or whether it is the living spring which can quench his thirst. Sin and death are not words, or you might cure them with words. A man who only fancies that he is sick can be cured by other fancies, but the really diseased must have a physician. What have the theories of philosophy ever done for the sin-sick world? Where are they whom they have saved? What hospitals have they builded? What houses of mercy have they founded? What help do they offer these wandering souls, or what consolation do they bring to the dying? Sin and death are awful realities, and they must have a real Christ and Saviour.
Unity will never come by compromises with the truth. The Kingdom of God cannot prosper amid strife and divisions, which would wreck any earthly kingdom divided against itself. If we believe with all our hearts in a real King and a real Kingdom of God on earth, we have mastered the first step towards reunion. And when in the love of Christ our King we love all whom He loves, unity will not be from us.
Every branch of the Church recognizes the validity of all Baptisms in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. For the most part they do accept the facts of the Catholic Creeds. They are citizens of God's Kingdom, who are living in involuntary schism, and their errors in doctrine came from defective training and not from self-will and rejection of truth. We are always stumbling at each other's definitions, because the truth looks so different from our widely different standpoints. Who can doubt that when the Son of Peace dwells in our hearts, that the Peace of God will make us one in Jesus Christ? It may not come in our day. There are alienations to be healed, hard words to be, recalled, personal sins to be repented of, divisions to be cured; but the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost will make us one. All Christian folk must day by day beseech God to show the way, to give us and all Christian bodies an organization which will be in perfect harmony with the Catholic Church throughout the world.
Our own branch of the Church ought to be the pioneer in this blessed work. Many are already looking to us and asking our aid. All over the land there are communities where the entire population are of foreign birth, and belong to some organization outside of the Church. If need be, why may not the Church do to gain unity what she did in early days to retain it, give to them a Bishop of their own? Our mother Church has been compelled to adopt the principles of suffragan Bishops to care for her own neglected population, and I see no reason why this may not be with us the solution of some of the difficulties of our own time.
One thing is always safe, and that is, hearty, believing work. We shall not repel the assaults of skepticism by building defences around the Church. We must become aggressive, and go forth in the spirit of Christ to conquest. Nothing silences all cavils to objections like loving work for Christ. A Christian woman gathering lambs for Christ in lanes and alleys; a sister of mercy ministering by the bed of the sick and the dying; men leaving home and kindred to carry the Gospel to the heathen; men of business trafficing in the market to gain means to be almoners for God, present the Divine character of our religion so as to stop the mouths. of all painsayers.
It may be that the time is at hand when to save the Church and bring the world into subjection to our King we shall have to fall back on the rule of the Apostolic Church, when "all that believed were together and had, all things common, and sold their goods and possessions and parted them to all, as every man had need, and they continued daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having, favor with all the people, and the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved."
God is punishing us for our unhappy divisions. He has permitted us, to see such a school of infidelity as the world has never seen. It will soon be a hand-to-hand conflict for all that we hold dear for time and for eternity. This will compel all who love Christ to become one. I believe that the faith and love and work of a reunited Church will bear such fruit in works of love that it will draw many irresolute souls to find safety in its fold. When the Church shows in its practice, the lessons of brotherhood and citizenship in the kingdom of God, as clearly as she teaches the faith in her creeds, the world will bow to her who is not of the world, and all men take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.
Brethren, with what power do these lessons of the reality of the Kingdom of God come home to us when we have met to consecrate a Bishop for the Indian race? After three hundred years we are now doing what the Primitive Church did when a door was opened to preach the Gospel to the heathen people. But we bless God to-day the hundredth Bishop of our American Church is given to the Red Man. The Church found here a race whose history was lost in the darkness of the past. Their feasts of first fruits, their sacred stones, evidently going back to altars of sacrifice, and their customs of purification, show that they belonged to a people who had once the knowledge of the true God. They were not idolaters. They had home affections and love of tribe and kindred. They were brave in war, wise in council, and true to their plighted faith. They recognized a Great Spirit and were accustomed to ask His aid. They heard spirit voices from the unseen world in the music from the waterfall, the song of singing-birds, the minstrelsy of the wind, and the conflict of the elements. For three hundred years their helplessness and sorrow have been pleading for the Gospel. I will not mar this day by the sad story of their wrongs. It is written plain in the book of God, and bitterly have we paid for it in massacre and blood. Never can I forget my own feelings when I was brought face to face with this helpless people. A power stronger than my own weak will compelled me to become the Indians' friend. Our Church had one mission among the Ojibways, planted by Rev. J. Lloyd Breck. The missionary was driven from the country by Indians maddened to phrensy, by wrong and the counsels of bad men of our own race. The Presbyterians had a mission among the Sioux. They were the pioneers in this work, and all honor to those who first translated the Gospel in the Indian tongue, and gave the first Christian songs to the Dacotahs. There was no mission among the lower Sioux. They plead with me to send them a minister. The Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman, a graduate of our Fairbault Divinity School, offered himself for the work, and gave to it the devotion and strength of his youthful heart. The mission was hardly commenced when there came to us the terrible massacre of 1862. Our Minnesota border was for three hundred miles one track of blood, and eight hundred of our people died by savage hands. There were long weary months of deferred hopes, of blighted plans, of heart-aches and trials. The Sioux Indians were removed to the Missouri, in the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Nebraska, who gave to them every sympathy of a loving, tender, Christian heart. For eight years he has been a father to this feeble flock. The future of this mission, which has been so blessed of God, was settled when Hinman said, "I will go with these Indians wherever they go, if I go to the Rocky Mountains."
After their removal, starvation brought disease and death to the Indian's tent. The Church began to lose faith in the work, and the friends of the Indian could only say "How long, how long, oh Lord!" It was in this dark hour, when they seemed forsaken by God and man, that the Society of Friends in this city sent us, through William Welsh, the Indian's friend, two thousand dollars; and I gladly pay my tribute of affection to these Christian men, who have never faltered in their devotion to this poor race. Amid all the darkness of those dark days there were always gleams of comfort; every mission had its own silver lining to the cloud. Enmegahbowh, "the one who stands for his people," our faithful Chippewa minister, an'd a few friends, saved Fort Ripley from massacre, and prevented a Chippewa war. Our Dacotah Christians and those of the Presbyterian mission above, rescued scores of white women and children from death. There was hardly a week without some incident to show us that the Gospel has found a resting-place in the Indian's heart. Now it was the love of little ones who had been gathered unto the Saviour's fold. Again we saw it in the calm faith of the dying who looked up to the better home, or in the bravery of some Christian who dared, at the risk of life, to encounter savage hatred to show his gratitude to those who had given to'him the religion of Christ. I wish I could tell you here, to-day, the tales of heroism of Taopa, Anagmani, Other Day, Paul Mazakuti, and many more whose history would sound like the stories of the old martyrs of the Church, and I kaow that if I had the power to tell you of Christian Indian death-beds, their calm faith, their loving hope in Christ, as one said to me: "The Great Spirit has called me to go on the long journey. I shall not be lonesome on the way, for Jesus will go with me." If you could have seen and heard them you would weep, as I have, for joy, that many of this poor race were numbered with that multitude who had been washed white in the blood of the Lamb. God has wonderfully rewarded us for our poor labors and doubting faith. Our Church has one Mission among the Oneidas, one among the Ojibways, or Chippeways, one among the Santee Sioux, one among the Ponkas, one among the Yanktons, one among the Brules, one among the Tetons, and one among the Cheyennes. We have in all eight Churches, six white clergy and four Indian clergy; two have entered into rest. We have twenty-five catechists and eight sisters, who are laboring in the Indian field. The Book of Common Prayer has been translated, and you may hear the same songs going heavenward from Indian Churches which were sung in God's temple three thousand years ago. Could you hear' in their musical tongues these men of the wandering foot singing praises unto Jesus, you would believe that no music sounded sweeter to His ear than the chorus of voices which goes up to Heaven from the land of the Oneida, the Santee, the Yankton, the Ponka and the Ojibway. I never listen to their simple faith, I never see their reverent behavior in the House of God, that my heart is not melted into tenderness and mine eyes blinded with tears. Many who had no faith in Indian Missions, have wept like children as they saw the strange sight of a crowded congregation kneeling reverently in prayer, or heard their soul-stirring songs of praises of Jesus. Day after day wild men from the prairie and forest came to our missions to look with awe upon the white man's Grand Medicine, which has saved some of their race from death. Some of these are as wild as the wandering Arab of the desert, and have no fixed abiding-place and home. Among such as these a Missionary of the Church of England has lived for ten years on the Yucon river. His field of labor was one of a thousand miles in extent. To reach it he had to travel four thousand miles by water beyond the border of Minnesota. For ten years he has traveled on snow-shoes, going from camp to camp to preach the Gospel.
The Rev. Mr. McDonald has, this last month, gone back to England to print the Gospel for several hundred Christian Indians whom he has baptized. No work among the heathen has ever brought greater rewards than the work of Indian Missions. So signal has been its success that our rulers have adopted a new Indian policy of Christian civilization. The President of the United States asks for the co-operation of all the Christian people of the United States to solve a problem which neither State craft nor military force could solve. The obligation which rests upon us is greater than that of any other body of Christians. We claim to believe in one Catholic,and Apostolic Church. We are bound by a creed, which we confess whenever we enter the house of God, to make these heathen the citizens of the kingdom of God. A Christian philosophy does not take hold of the heathen mind. The heathen tongue has no Christian ideas. Abstract religious doctrines confuse the Indian, and his nature is not moved by the emotional side of religion. He does believe in spiritual influences, and has a deep sense of all spiritual mysteries. He does feel keenly that he belongs to a perishable race. He suffers daily from the discords and hatreds of a life of strife. He reads of the coming doom when he looks into the face of his children. It is the topic which is never absent from the council or the camp-fire. The story of a real Christ and King who loves him, who pities him, and feels for him, and who is able to save him, comes home to his heart. He can see and feel the meaning of brotherhood and citizenship. An abstraction does not touch his sympathies, it has no message for his children, but the new social order, of which Christ is the head, brings to him a brotherhood of which his tribe was the counterfeit. As a thoughtful Indian once said to him: "I can see your religion. It calls me. It has a place for my children." Our work for this Indian race is hardly begun. Shall I tell you that wild men have come four and five hundred miles to ask for a Christian teacher. There is room for us to plant twenty Indian mission? where we have one. Among our Christian Indians, schools and hospitals are to be builded. The rich stores of sacred history, ot Christian songs and devotion are to be translated. The Church must send out brotherhoods to do what Christian men did for our Saxon race. Every Indian mission ought to have its sisterhood to train and mould Indian woman to take a woman's rightful place as a helpmeet for many Christian men. A true Christian civilization must be the handmaid of religion. No true progress can be made until the Christian Indian has a home, and has gathered around that home, comforts for his loved ones. The Indian tipi can never be a home. The follower and vassal of a wandering chief cannot be Christ's freeman.
The rights of property must be guaranteed to every individual, and he and his have the protection of a wise and stable government. There is not the slightest vestige of law in the Indian country, and hence we have never broken up the feuds and hatreds and wars of Indian tribes. The people who have no homes, no law and no government, must always be the sons of Ishmael. The Home, the Church, and the State are institutions of God, and if you take any one away, humanity is a wreck. So long as the Government leaves the Indian the follower and dependant of a warlike chief, so long as every friendly Indian is in peril from the violence of savage leaders, we nurse and foster savage wars. You must give them a home and throw around the home every influence which can consecrate womanhood, educate childhood, and protect the aged. You have solved the Indian problem when you have made the home the centre of a man's interest, by giving him personal rights of property, Christian training, and the protection of law. The Church, the School, and the Government are teachers for this end, and the Gospel of Christ hallows and consecrates the work by blessing life here, and by giving hopes for the life beyond the grave.
Brother beloved, much of what I have said is familiar to you as household words. You learned a Pastor's work in the lanes and alleys of this city. Your position as Secretary of our Foreign Missions has laid open to you the vast field of heathen wretchedness and woe. The Providence of God has led you by ways which you knew not, to prepare you for this work. The office committed unto you is to be the Apostle of the Indians. It is to be a father in God to your brethren who labor among them. The commission which you receive to-day in the Kingdom of God is from Jesus Christ, its King. I know your poor heart cries out, "Who is sufficient for these things?" He who calls you to this ministry says, "Fear not, for I am with thee." You go in behalf of the Church to strengthen the hands and to cheer the hearts of those who have given time, talents, and counted life not dear to preach Christ. You go to labor with these brave men, to gather precious souls unto the Saviour's fold. They have always had a Bishop's love and prayers. They need and they must have all the sympathy of a Bishop's heart. The Bishop is a father. He must have fatherhood, There must be room for all his flock in his heart. The poverty, the sickness, and the trials of all must be your trials. The poor Indians are children. They will perplex you daily with their sorrows, and they will weary with their pleas for help. Every new mission planted, every Church builded, every clergyman ordained, will bring to you new burdens and may add trials to your aching heart. You may grow weary with the cares of an office made heavier by the wayward wills, the restlessness under restraint and the individuality of those whom you are over in the Lord.
Words of disrespect and reproach may wound your heart. The only medicine for your weary heart and the only cure for others is in the love of Jesus. The best Bishop is he who loves best. In ruling the flock of Christ never forget that we do not make men; we try to use them for the glory of God. They will differ in tastes, in habits of .thought, in religious definitions and methods of work. In a heathen field there must of necessity be greater liberty in teaching Divine truth by symbols. You must demand that all be done unto edifying, that all teach the same faith and with one heart labor as brethren for Christ.
I know not what trials await you. The Church which is now keenly alive to the wants of this poor people may grow cold. The first fervor of Christian converts may pass away. Old heathen habits may reassert their power. You may even have to say to some of your flock as St. Paul said to Christians in his time, "Lie not one to another." "Let him that stole, steal no more." The bad men of the border may excite savage hearts to deeds of blood. The Government may again forget its plighted faith. You may have to stand alone and breast the anger of the people in defence of the helpless. In the darkest hour look up to Christ your King. Better men than we have labored and died without seeing the harvest. Thus Greenland and Iceland were won to Christ. It is yours to work and pray and die. God giveth the harvest. You go in the name of Christ. You bear the seal of His authority. You have His promise, "I am with you alway."
Many who are now wandering as sheep having no shepherd shall be led by you to the Saviour's fold, and find rest and pasture in the Saviour's care. I wish you no greater joy, than that you may hear many whom you have taught a Saviour's love, sing that song which no man could learn but they who were redeemed from among men.
Brother, never were you so near my heart as you are to-day. If it were the will of God, how gladly would I lay down my Bishop's staff to go and work with you, and, if need be, die with you. It cannot be. We shall be separated in our work, but our prayers for the Indian will meet in heaven. It only remains for me to give you, for our brethren present and absent, our God-speed and blessing, and pledge you, who so need it, the love, the sympathy and the prayers of the Church. May God bless you. Amen.
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