Mr. Osier preached a most excellent funeral sermon from this appropriate text, “Blessed are those servants, whom their Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching.” My dear father was employed to the very last in doing his Lord’s work: his three last days were spent entirely in parochial visiting, contrary to his usual practice of spending the greater portion of each day in his study, and two or three hours in his drives and in visiting his people. Some of those whom he visited on these days, afterwards told a young friend, that he talked to them principally about preparation for death. The man-servant also has spoken with much feeling of his conversation during those drives, and he mentioned also, that each day, when they reached home, he said, “Once more, Stephen, God has brought us home in safety.” My beloved father’s consistency of conduct won for him the respect and esteem of all who knew him, even of those who differed from him, sometimes widely, in religious opinions. Such was the case with the bishop, who however not only respected him, but entertained very kind feelings towards him, which he evinced by coming from Toronto, though with great inconvenience, and unsolicited, to pay the last mark of respect to his remains. The public testimony which was borne to the excellence of my dear father’s character, in a resolution of the Central Board of the Church Society, of which body he was a member, was so gratifying, that I cannot refrain from copying a part of it. He is spoken of in the resolution as one “who for warm yet humble piety, enlarged and Christian charity, a self-denying course of life, and a holy devotedness to his Heavenly Master’s cause, was surpassed by none of those who have been commissioned to feed the flock of Christ in this diocese.”
One of the features of character alluded to in this resolution had been especially observed by a young clerical friend, who, when speaking with much warmth of the high estimation he entertained of my dear father’s character, particularly mentioned his _great humility_. As an instance of this, he told us, that, when he had gone with my father into the vestry after preaching what Mr. D. considered a most excellent sermon, he had spoken of it as furnishing cause for fresh humiliation, and a stimulus to greater exertions and more earnest prayers for the future. Mr. D., on the same occasion, alluded to the peculiar facility with which he constantly introduced religious remarks in conversation, which, he said, he had particularly noticed on the few occasions on which he had met him in company. In answer to an observation, that my dear father had often deplored the want of this very gift, Mr. D. remarked, that this circumstance afforded a fresh proof of his humility.