แ

HIS DEATH.

I shall behold thy blissful face,
And stand complete in righteousness.

"This life's a dream, an empty show;
But the bright world to which I go
Hath joys substantial and sincere;
When shall I wake and find me there?

"O glorious hour! O blest abode!

I shall be near and like my God!
And flesh and sin no more control
The sacred pleasures of the soul.

"My flesh will slumber in the ground

Till the last trumpet's joyful sound;

Then burst the chains with sweet surprise,
And in my Saviour's image rise."

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At about six o'clock the same morning, he expired, at the age of thirty-eight years and ten

months.*

At his funeral, which was attended on the following Sabbath by a large concourse of people, and by a number of ministers, a discourse was preached from Philip. 1: 21; "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." In the afternoon another minister preached from Ezek. 22: 30; "And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge,

Two pupils had the month before entered his school, viz.: John Mitchell, Sept. 6, "to give a dollar per week for board, to make some proper allowance for wood and candles in winter besides, and to be schooled after the rate of £5 per annum;" and Caleb Cooper, Sept. 13, who "came to school again, to pay, for board and schooling, twenty pounds per annum."

and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none."

On a large slab over his grave are the following lines:

"Beneath this tomb the precious reliques lie

Of one too great to live, but not to die:
Indued by nature with superior parts
To swim in science and to scan the arts,
To soar aloft, inflamed with sacred love,
To know, admire, and serve the God above;
Gifted to sound the thundering law's alarm,
The smiles of virtue, and the gospel's charm;
A faithful watchman, studious to discharge
The important duties of his weighty charge.
To say the whole, and sound the highest fame,
He lived a Christian, and he died the same.
A man so useful, from his people rent,

His babes, the college, and the church lament."

The next year, 1763, there was published a memoir of him at Woodbridge, New Jersey, in a pamphlet of about sixty pages, of which two or three copies are yet in print. Mr. White, some years ago, was at the pains to make a manuscript copy of it, from which our quotations have been drawn.

In the settlement of Mr. Smith's estate, his widow received in "goods and money given by will," £102; for "her third of the land sold by vendue," £37; upon which, it being under lease, a charge was made of £13 for "new tenor money." This conveyance included "all her goods she brought" at

REV. AZEL ROF.

109

her marriage, now valued at £89. Parishioners in arrears for rates had to settle, by note or payment, with the executors, of whom Joseph Riggs was the one on whom the business chiefly devolved.*

His library was sold at auction. A part of the books were purchased by Mrs. Smith, and a part by Rev. Azel Roe, a young clergyman who studied theology with Mr. S., and who, the next year, (1763) married the widow, and was settled at Woodbridge.t

Thus ended a ministry of fourteen years-a short

See "Caleb Smith's Book of Accounts." On page 110 there is a charge made by the executors, in an account with Mrs. Smith, for butter received of Deacon Thompson. We find no other mention of this officer.

† Dr. Roe preached at Woodbridge till his death, in 1815. He was twenty-nine years a trustee of the College of New Jersey; was a member of the First General Assembly, in 1789, and moderator of that body in 1802. His zeal for American freedom was such, that in the war of the Revolution the British and Tories planned his capture, and with McKnight of Shrewsbury, he was carried away a prisoner. In fording a stream, the officer who seized him, and who treated him with great politeness, insisted on carrying him over. He consented, and as he was crossing on the officer's shoulders, he observed for he was a man of ready wit—“ Well, sir, if never before, you can say after this that you were once priestridden." The joke so convulsed the officer with laughter, that he came near letting him fall into the stream.-Sprague's Annals. Mrs. Roe, by her second marriage, became the mother of two sons and six daughters. Apollos, the son of Mr. Smith, on reaching manhood, went to the South, and was never heard of by his friends."-Webster.

110

SERMONS PUBLISHED.

introduction to one higher, more glorious, and eternal.

Two productions of his pen were published; an "Exhortation to the people," delivered at Connecticut Farms, in 1750, at the ordination and settlement of Daniel Thane; and the funeral sermon of President Burr, 1757.

A

CHAPTER V.

REV. JEDEDIAH CHAPMAN.

YEAR passed. In December, 1763, a messen

ger from the Mountain Society was on his way to Bethlehem, Connecticut, bearing two letters to Rev. Joseph Bellamy.* The first, dated the 23d, was written by Rev. Alexander McWhorter, then four years a pastor in Newark, and contained the following: "I have here wrote you by the bearer, at the appointment of the Presbytery, in behalf of the church of Newark Mountains, and I hope, sir, you'll recommend them to some young man whom you esteem for his knowledge of the truth; and don't send us one of your Antinomians or Arminians, neither send us any of your Sandemanians; we hear you have several such in New England, but I am apprehensive very few of them thoroughly understand Sandeman's scheme. I thank you, sir, for the few remarks you have given us upon this in

* See the Bellamy correspondence, Pres. His. Soc., Phila.