But notice, also, that the longest life-path has a terminus.  What a gauntlet to run—­the accidents, the epidemics, the ailments of ninety-two years!  It seemed as if this man would live on forever.  His life reached from the administration of George Washington to that of President Arthur.  But the liberal hand is closed, and the beaming eye is shut, and the world-encompassing heart is still.  When he was at my house, I felt I was entertaining a king.  But the king is dead, and we learn that the largest volume of life has its last chapter, its last paragraph, and its last word.  What are ninety-two years compared with the years that open the first page of the future?  For that let us be ready.  Christ came to reconstruct us for usefulness, happiness, and heaven.

I know not the minutiae of Peter Cooper’s religious opinions.  Some men are worse than their creed, and some are better.  The grandest profession of Jesus Christ is a life devoted to the world’s elevation and betterment.  A man may have a membership in all the orthodox Churches in Christendom, and yet, if he be mean and selfish and careless about the world’s condition, he is no Christian; while, on the other hand, though he may have many peculiarities of belief, if he live for others more than for himself, he is Christ-like, and, I think, he must be a Christian.  But let us remember that the greatest philanthropist of the ages was Jesus Christ, and the greatest charity ever known was that which gave not its dollars, but its blood, for the purchase of the world’s deliverance.  Standing in the shadow of Peter Cooper’s death, I pray God that all the resources of America may be consecrated.  We are coming on to times of prosperity that this country never imagined.  Perhaps here and there a few years of recoil or set-back, but God only can estimate the wealth that is about to roll into the lap of this nation.  Between five years ago, when I visited the South, and my recent visit, there has been a change for the better that amounts to a resurrection.  The Chattahoochee is about to rival the Merrimac in manufactures, and the whole South is being filled with the dash of water-wheels and the rattle of spindles.  Atlanta has already $6,000,000 invested in manufactures.  The South has gone out of politics into business.  The West, from its inexhaustible mines, is going to, disgorge silver and gold, and pour the treasure all over the nation.  May God sanctify the coming prosperity of the people.  The needs are as awful as the opulence is to be tremendous.  In 1880 there were 5,000,000 people over ten years of age in the United States that could not read, and over 6,000,000 who could not write, and nearly 2,000,000 of the voters.  We want 5,000 Cooper Institutes and churches innumerable, and just one spiritual awakening, but that reaching from the St. Lawrence to Key West, and from Barnegat Light-house to the Golden Gate.  We can all somewhere be felt in the undertaking.  I like the sentiment and the rhythm of some anonymous poet, who wrote: