Herein I am pleased to give the complete text of the sermon preached by Oliver Sherman Prescott (1824-1903) the Sunday after the funeral of Clement C. Moore, as printed in 1863 with accompanying tributes in letters from Episcopal bishops Horatio Potter of New York and William Rollinson Whittingham of Maryland. Although quoted by Moore's biographer Samuel W. Patterson in The Poet of Christmas Eve: A Life of Clement Clarke Moore, 1779-1863 (Morehouse-Gorham Co., 1956) at pages 98 and 159; and alluded to passingly in Patterson's later article
“The Centenary of Clement Clarke Moore—Poet of Christmas Eve.” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. 32, no. 3, 1963, pages 211–220 at 213. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42972989
the rarity of this hard-to-find item has unfortunately limited its potential reach and appreciation. WorldCat locates copies in only two libraries, the Boston Public Library and Keller Library of the General Theological Seminary in New York City.
Both copies have been consulted while making the transcription offered below. With generous professional assistance from Melissa Chim, Scholarly Communications Librarian with Excelsior University and former Reference Librarian and Archivist at General Theological Seminary (GTS), I was able to examine scans of the printed version kindly provided by the Boston Public Library. Evidently the printed edition of Rev. Prescott's 1863 sermon on the Power of the Resurrection was not among the rare works transferred from GTS to Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) in 2024, "selected due to their enduring scholarly and teaching value to the seminaries and The Episcopal Church, as well as their market value" according to a press release in February 2025 concerning the Future of the Keller Library Collection. As reported in the same announcement,
"The remaining rare books that were not transferred to VTS have been purchased by James Cummins Bookseller."
Earlier this month I acquired from James Cummins Bookseller the printed sermon long restricted to the Rare Book Room of the General Theological Seminary Library.
Presumably this was the copy that distinguished GTS librarian Niels Henry Sonne consulted and duly cited on page 379 of his enlightening essay
"‘The Night Before Christmas’: Who Wrote It?” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. 41, no. 4, 1972, pp. 373–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42973358.
***
The Power of the Resurrection.
A
SERMON
PREACHED IN
TRINITY CHURCH, NEWPORT, R. I.
ON THE
SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 1863,
BEING THE SUNDAY FOLLOWING THE FUNERAL OF
CLEMENT CLARK MOORE, L.L.D.
by
REV. O. S. PRESCOTT
CHARLES E. HAMMETT, JR, NEWPORT, R. I.
1863.
***
LETTERS.
NEW YORK, 33 WEST 24TH STREET,
June 20, 1863.
Most affectionately yours,
HORATIO POTTER.
DR. CLEMENT C. MOORE.
P. S.— My departed son often spoke of the kindness he received from your son and daughter, in Paris.
***
NEW YORK, 33 WEST 24TH STREET,
July 3, 1863.
MY DEAR DR. MOORE:
It becomes my duty to intrude once more upon your quiet retreat. A few days after my former note, that is, on the forenoon of the 24th of June (Wednesday), the Alumni of the General Seminary had an early service and communion at St. Paul's Chapel, and afterwards a social breakfast at the Astor House. The meeting was distinguished for warmth and cordiality, and by many affectionate references to the friends and benefactors of the Seminary. The Rev. Dr. Coxe was charged to communicate to the Bishop of Maryland and to Hugh Davy Evans, a testimony of their sympathy and grateful regard; while, by a unanimous and earnest resolution, I was requested to convey to you an expression of their gratitude for your many and important services to the Seminary, of their veneration for your character, and of their affectionate interest in your health and happiness. I need hardly say how happy I am to be the honored representative of the Alumni for communicating sentiments in which I most heartily concur.
On our return to town in the autumn, I promise myself the pleasure of paying my respects to you.
Ever most faithfully yours,
HORATIO POTTER.
TO CLEMENT C. MOORE, LL. D.
***
BALTIMORE, July 15, 1863.
DEAR PRESCOTT:
Thirty years, almost, have dimmed my personal recollections of my dear old friend, Dr. C. C. Moore. Since 1840, I have not chanced to meet with him five times, nor then to converse with him for more than five minutes at a time.
As a pupil, resident graduate, and librarian of the Seminary, I was sharer with all his other pupils of the free, gracious urbanity and generosity which distinguished his intercourse with them. His pure, simple, gentle modesty, and unaffected diffidence in displaying the ample store of learning which he was nevertheless well able to bring forth on fit occasions, secured for him the profoundest respect of those even who were disposed to complain of the absence of a dogmatical authority to which they would have felt it an advantage to themselves to have been brought more under subjection. Those who obtained closer access to him (and none were debarred by inaccessibility on his part), soon learned to love him as a father or elder brother, and found rich enjoyment in drawing out the treasures of his various reading, seasoned continually with the gentle flow of his quiet, sparkling humor.
Afterward, he became associated with me, during my rectorship of St. Luke's Church, as one of the Vestry of the Parish. In that body he took full part in all its deliberations and doings, bringing his clear perceptions of Christian duty and high sense of gentlemanly honor to bear upon every transaction in which he had voice or part. In every possible way, he and his family contributed to the common service and work of the congregation. Quiet and retiring as he was, his promptness and punctuality in every duty, and spontaneous readiness in every charity, made him unconsciously preëminent in the loving band of Christian brothers then bound together by the ties of parochial association in "St. Luke's, Greenwich." His personal attention and liberal communication of his means were never wanting to any reasonable undertaking for the advancement of true religion, or the alleviation of human misery.
Again for several years it was my privilege to sit with him in the Faculty of the Seminary, once more associated in the pursuits to which his kind labors and attentions had so largely contributed to introduce me. The same translucent simplicity of character and child likeness of inoffensive and unsuspecting goodness still manifested themselves in the Professor at the Board, and in all the mutual relations of our happy little community, as strongly as they had in earlier years to the youthful student. I still reversed and loved him with affections intensified, not changed, by the lapse of time and alteration of relations.
If you have time to consult Drs. Seabury and Haight, and Floyd Smith, Esq., of New York, I think you will be likely to obtain from them reminiscences of Dr. Moore more fresh and particular than my hurried recollections have been able to afford. They have been associated with him in much the same relations as I, but I think more intimately in some respects, and certainly more recently.
The Church can ill afford to part with such a son, even at the ripe age at which he has been called home. He was "an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile," and our unhappy times furnish too few examples of that rare character to be able to lose them without a poignant sense of deprivation.
It has not tended to lessen my sense of personal loss by the death of Dr. Moore, that only the day before the announcement of his decease appeared, I had seen that of the death of another of my dear old associates in church work of forty years' standing — Mr. C. N. S. Rowland, many years Treasurer of the Diocese of New York, and, like Dr. Moore, one of my Vestry at St. Luke's Church, New York, 1831-5.
I am,
Faithfully and affectionately yours,
W. R. WHITTINGHAM.
REV. O. S. PRESCOTT.
***
SERMON.
In the name of the father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.—John xi. 25, 26.
The titles of our Blessed Lord are not barren honours, but names of real Powers. They witness of Him as He is, and declare what He is. They are full of hidden meaning and mysterious grace, for they are outward and visible shadows of an inward and divine substance; and this because the Lord is our God; because the Son of man is the Son of the Everlasting Father, and so the Son of the Father, that He is One with Him in all that He is, and whatever is true of the Father as relates to the Godhead, is true also of Him, and as the Father is in His Divine Essence all that He claims to be and all that His attributes attest that He is, being not only wise, and just, and loving, and orderly, but Wisdom itself, and Justice itself, and Love itself, and Order itself; so is the Son all that He calls Himself, and all that He is called by those "who worship in sincerity and truth." This is what is meant when it is said that His titles are names of Powers, are outward shadows of a Divine substance; and both of these, the shadow and the substance, being claimed, possessed, used by Christ, are, in Him, made full of meaning and full of grace to all who put their whole trust in Him. These titles may be every-day words with us, as are those of our text; we may speak them thoughtlessly or lightly, may confine them within narrow and straitened limits, but this will affect not Him Whose they are, but ourselves alone, for no disrespect or damage, wilful or unwitting, done toward Christ can ever reach Him; like the prayer of the self-righteous pharisee, it remains with ones self, it ends where it begins, bringing loss and punishment upon the perpetrator, and upon him alone.
Christ says, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." There is no need to do more than indicate very briefly the circumstances under which these words were spoken. There lived at Bethany, a village near Jerusalem, a family, consisting of a brother and two sisters, with which, in His journeyings to and fro, the Son of Joseph and Mary was accustomed to stay. The brother fell sick and died and was buried. Word had been sent to his friend Jesus, but He had, to all appearance, disregarded or forgotten it, for we read that He remained "two days in the place where He was." Lazarus had Latin four days in the tomb, and his bereaved sisters wept at home, when news arrived that the Master was approaching. He entered not into the village, but first went to the place where Lazarus was laid, and there the sisters with their sympathizing friends gathered around Him. On the way the words were spoken, "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall live; and whoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." That there was in this utterance no ideal arrogation of power, the verses following prove. The Divine Speaker added, "Lazarus come forth!" and immediately the dead one, closely wrapped in burial clothes, bound hand and foot, so that had he been living he could not have moved, heard the living words and arose, and at Christ's further bidding they loosed him from his bonds and he took his place again among the dwellers upon earth. These words and this event were the first corner-stone in the foundation of the great system of Christianity as it is in philosophy. From so slight an event, in men's eyes, as the visit of a friend to a friend's grave, grew the enunciation of the grandest dogma of the Christian faith. It was preached by word and deed, and by these two witnesses was established; and ever since, when Christ's ministers and messengers have laid to rest and commended unto God those who have been sealed with Christ's seal in their foreheads, the same glorious and comfortable words have been spoken, and testimony has been borne to the power of Christ's titles, and He has been proclaimed, as He proclaimed Himself, forever and forevermore, the Resurrection and the Life.
I. Mark now the expression, the Resurrection and the Life. He does not limit or confine His claim to the simple ability to raise the dead, or to give life to whom He will; but He declares that He Himself— He, the Man there standing and weeping over a friend's grave; He, the son of a carpenter of Galilee and the poor woman that carpenter had espoused; He, who was often the guest of Lazarus, and Martha, and Mary,—is Himself, in deed and in truth, the very Resurrection and the very Life; that is, He is the cause, source, origin of these, and that without Him they would not because they could not be. Place yourselves in imagination among that sorrowing and awed company; think of these words, not made familiar by use, not assented to from habit or education, but as uttered for the first time and for the first time heard, and they will take on their full and startling strangeness. It is no wonder that men received them not, but crucified the Speaker of them. They would do so now under similar circumstances. This He knew, and knew that by their proclamation He was helping to affix the seal to His own death-warrant, for it was His teaching in regard to the Resurrection which brought upon him the charge of blasphemy, for which He was condemned to be crucified. This may help you to account for the solemn character of the gospel history of Lazarus' recall to life and for the Blessed Master's weeping. He foresaw the revolution He was working, the bitter opposition His truth would excite, and the suffering through which man was to pass to the joy that was to be born out of suffering, and to the triumph of Life over death and of the Resurrection over the grave. He was man, it is true, very man, but who can doubt, listening to this record, that He was God also? He saw the end from the beginning, and He was doing all things well. He was the Resurrection and the Life. He had come, the Light of the World, to bring life and immortality to light through His Gospel. From the exile of Adam from Eden mankind had dwelt in darkness and the shadow of death, and now the time was come when, in the Providence of God, the clouds were to be scattered, and the sea smoothed, and the sun to shine. He had come Who had worked hitherto and Who worketh still. Who was all-manifold in operation and all-fertile in resource. As had been foretold of Him from afar, "He did not strive nor cry, neither was His Voice heard in the streets," but the revolution was accomplished; slowly and gradually, day after day and week after week bringing their silent additions and contributions, without shocks and without violence upon his part the work progressed, till, finally, He died upon the Cross seemingly giving the lie to His own words, but in reality establishing them, for the third day He came forth from the grave at midnight and in silence, raising Himself from the dead, strong and glorious, as one refreshed with sleep, and appearing to His followers a vision of beauty, too intense for apprehension or belief. Then there came suddenly upon the earth a great calm. The Lion of the tribe of Judah had prevailed, death and hell were conquered and taken captive, the Holy Ghost was poured out, the Church of Christ was quickened into being, and the faith of Jesus was proclaimed to man. Out from Jerusalem began the preaching of the Gospel of the Resurrection; its blessed influence was shed abroad, and the idols and mummeries and sacrifices of paganism passed away and became as though they had never been, before the establishment of the heavenly worship and the Pure Oblation of the religion of the Cross. Looking back upon the past, we behold Christianity,— the fellowship of Christ with the Resurrection, for such the living Church of God is — rising and increasing like the sun in its splendour. It was majestic, it was beautiful, it was soothing to man's grief, it was grateful to his needs, it was satisfying to his hopes, it was welcome, it was thrilling because it was the Body of Christ and the Power of the Father. It rescued man; it uplifted him; it saved him from the devil's service and the devil's doom, and it set him up to dwell with angels.
II. These titles are not synonymous. Christ is the Resurrection and the Life — the Resurrection of the dead, and the Life of all that live. He is, as His great Apostle says, the Head of the Church and the Saviour of the body, the living Head of all souls in every place in earth, in paradise, or Heaven; and the Saviour of all bodies built up into and forming his own mystical Body, wherever they may be, beneath the sod or beneath the waters, and which at the Resurrection shall hear His Voice and awake. He came into the world in the substance of our flesh to make all things new, to abolish and put away death by His Life and the grave by His Resurrection. Hiding His Divinity in His Passion, He carried captive His captivity, and, as the sun from the clouds, He passed out strangely from the closed sepulchre, leaving its stone unmoved, and its seal unbroken, and its guards undisturbed, and shed abroad the light of a new and supernatural life. Before He came, the world was full of "darkness and cruel habitations." Inspired men among the Jews may have caught far-off glimpses and faint shadowings of the glories of the Resurrection, as when Elijah, passed to life without seeing death, or when they read of the Redeemer who should stand at the latter day upon the earth; but with these exceptions the veil of uncertainty and doubt was before all faces. An idea of immortality for the soul was the highest and best the most virtuous attained unto, and this seems to have been born out of intense love of life, but for the masses there was no hope; they saw that the wise and prudent passed away and ceased to be as well as the ignorant and foolish, and so they cast off all restraint and abandoned themselves as brute beasts, and followed their own lusts, and maddened themselves with strange desires, making gods of their own pleasures and falling down and worshipping them. All this Christ came to change thoroughly and absolutely. His work was different but not less complete than when in the beginning light was separated from darkness and the first day was ushered into being. He died upon the Cross for the redemption of all mankind, and He rose from the dead for the justification of them that believe in Him; for we are what we are, in privilege and in promise, because He is what He is, and He is now our Resurrection and our Life. This is the great verity of Christianity; the light of God and the Lamb in the midst of the temple, the central point around which all else revolves, and to publish which all else was done. His preaching of this brought Him to the Cross. His followers, iterating it, turned the world upside down. For this He witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate, and St. Paul was called in question before kings and courts. To this the glorious company of the Apostles were witnesses, and out of it grew the noble army of Martyrs.
The Resurrection and the Life came into our dead and darkened world and did His work, His strange work, and death became a sleep, and the grave a place of rest. Before Him faded away old philosophies and cruel superstitions, and savage sacrifices, and strange witchcrafts, and gods of wood and stone, and ignorance of one's origin and doubt of one's destiny; and around Him,— for He is the Centre of all real religion,— there grew up the holy Church with its supernatural life and supernatural ways, made by Him His kingdom, and intended by Him to be forever like Himself, One, Mighty, Holy and Eternal. At His Birth the Angels sang glory to God on high and on earth peace, good will to men, and ever since, day after day, and in the silent night, in populous cities and over quiet plains, on bleak sides of mountains and under leafy meadow shades, as constantly as sun and moon and stars go forth in heaven, so steadily the stately march of Christian services and Christian truth has held its way, and Heaven has been let down to earth most wondrously, and the evil spirits of paganism have been chased back to the darkness whence they came.
III. There is another consideration connected with the titles of our Divine Lord. They are not sterile honours, but fruitful Powers,— not dead words, but living and lively things. They bring to others and bring others unto that of which they witness and are the pledge. Because He is the Resurrection and the Life, therefore he that believeth in Him, though he were dead yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Him shall never die. He would not only that we should be with Him but that we should be like Him, and therefore He giveth Himself to us with all that He is and all that He hath. For this reason St. Paul, who knew the power of His Resurrection, writes: "If ye then be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the Right Hand of God." Through His Risen and Glorified Humanity come to us all gifts of salvation and forgiveness and overcoming of sin and restoration unto holiness and victory over the grave and vanquishment of death and oneness with God. In It are bound up all treasures of wisdom and mercy, and pardon, and charity, and saintliness. All that He is in Himself, that He becomes in us by dwelling in us. On the Cross He died for us, and by the Resurrection He lives in us. He is the new and second Adam, and was made, not a "living soul" only, but a "Quickening Spirit," that through His Sinless Flesh life might pass to all who should be made the members of His body. Before he came, the multitude of men knew nothing of their origin or their destiny; to them death was a fearful leap out into darkness, and the grave was a blank horror. But when His work was ended, when He had passed up from the Hill of His Sublime Ascension, and the clouds had received Him out of sight, the stone which, since the death of Abel, had closed futurity from man's gaze, was rolled away and the fair angel of Hope sat upon it, and around was shed light and peace; for though we know not fully what we shall be, we know that he is the Resurrection and the Life, and that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
We are led to-day to speak of death, and we begin by speaking of life, for the death of the Christian is an entrance upon life eternal.
When we were last gathered together in this church, it was to celebrate the funeral of the venerable and venerated Dr. Clement Clark Moore. Full of years and full of honors, his pathway to the grave sloped by growing infirmities, and his shortening steps taken more and more tremblingly and slow as he lost his hold on life, and clung unto the earth whither he was returning, he has passed from our sight as a shock of corn fully ripe. You who have known him only in the frailness and feebleness of the extremest years of man's life, cannot well understand the important place he has filled and the important work he has done in and for the Church of which, in God's mercy, it is our privilege to be members. He has not left behind him, it may be safely said, among the faithful laity one whose departure will be so widely felt, and whose memory will be so fondly treasured. To his munificence the Church is indebted for her chief Theological School — the General Seminary in New York. Its entire landed estate in that city was his gift. For a long series of years he filled, and filled well, the chair of Hebrew and Oriental Literature, rendering his services modestly and unpretendingly, and for the most part gratuitously. He survived all those associated with him when he first entered upon his duties in connection with it. The hundreds who have been educated in that noblest Church Institution of this land, have reaped the benefit of his good deeds, and been recipients of his beneficence, and they bless his memory.
This is hardly the place to do more than allude to his career as a man of polite letters. It is enough that his position is no mean one. He was a large-minded scholar and an open-handed Christian gentleman, and those qualities were wedded in him to a genuine simplicity and childlike modesty, as winning as they are rare. His whole character was formed and fashioned by religion; it was a Christian product, not to be found outside the limits of Christian influence, but rooted in the soil of the Church, and bearing supernatural flowers and fruits blossoming and ripening in the light of the Resurrection and the Life. He gave much to the cause of Christ, in love, and labor, and money, and the Church — which is the embodiment of that cause — gave back to him a Christian training, a Christlike nearness, the high consolation of her heavenly gifts and the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection and the Life. He could say upon his knees, as a child, "But though, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders;" and he could strive like an hero to fulfil her law of loving his neighbour as himself. Modest, unpretending, retiring, always a learner, and ever looking out to be taught, he seems to have striven to live only, as has been said of one who laboured in another sphere, "to love and to be unknown." He did hard work for the education of the clergy in his generation and provided for its continuance forever, there by opening a perennial spring of good to men. He prosecuted many labors and effected many religious undertakings, and all the while he was content to be overlooked by the world, and not to be known outside of his place. He did his work for God alone, with a single eye and a pure heart, undisturbed by inimical surroundings and undistracted by applause, making Christ his sole hope, and Heaven his sole aim, and seeking to lay up abiding treasure and eternal recompense in "the Land that is far off," but to be reached by all.
While the General Theological Seminary shall remain, and while the blessed Christmas-tide shall be celebrated with Christmas rejoicings, — and this will doubtless be till Christ shall come again,— so long shall the name of the genial poet, and learned professor, and munificent benefactor live in the hearts of the Reverend Fathers and the innocent, loving children of our Holy Church.
Such as he was he has passed away and there is no one, to all appearance, with the heart or will to occupy his place. His departure severs another time linking us with the past, and removes another of the masters to whom my brothers of the clergy have been accustomed to look up. We shall no more break for him or eat with him the Bread of Life. He has come for the last time to his place before the altar, and for the first time he felt no will to kneel at it. His body was met at the entrance of this churchyard with the words, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." They fell on ears closed to the sounds of earth. But while we commended his body to the ground, and baptized it with the baptism of the dust, in the hope of a glorious Resurrection, we doubted not that his soul was far away from the vexations and cares of this wicked and troubled world, with those he had loved, in joy, and Felicity, and rest, in the Paradise of God.
And now what remains for us but to thank God for the good example given us in our deceased brother, and to endeavor ourselves to imitate it. I have sketched it poorly and imperfectly, but lovingly and reverently, as one whose privilege it has been to sit at his feet and learn of him; and I have sought to bear in mind and not offend his keen and simple modesty and unaffected childlikeness. He was a rare man and a Christian gentleman. He has finished his labours, he has entered into rest, and he is blessed, for his works do follow him even while they remain with us as a praise throughout the churches.
And now let us lift up our hearts, and lift up our voices, and pray for ourselves and for all souls, that we fail not to attain unto the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Around us, while we are alive and remain in the flesh, are at best but fleeting and transient things. Old friends and faces, old homes and haunts, bright days and sunny hours pass by us and are gone; but before us is the kingdom of God and the Resurrection, and It is all enduring, all satisfying, all divine. There are no storms in Its firmament, and no clouds move across Its sky, there is no change, no vicissitude, no fading, or withering, or passing away. As we enter upon It, such we shall remain forever in It, growing nearer unto and more like Him Who is Chiefest among ten thousand and Altogether Lovely, yet never attaining unto Him because He is the very Resurrection and the Life.
Related posts
- Moore's 1825 Lecture Introductory to the Course of Hebrew Instruction, full text
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-lecture-introductory-to-course-of.html
- Samuel H. Turner's 1850 dedication to Clement C. Moore
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/02/samuel-h-turners-1850-dedication-to.html
- "One of the best of men": Evert A. Duyckinck on Clement C. Moore
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/02/evert-duyckinck-on-clement-c-moore-one.html
- That ripe scholar and rare man
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/12/that-ripe-scholar-and-rare-man.html
- Santa Claus in Morristown, New Jersey on New Year's Eve, 1834
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2025/02/santa-claus-in-morristown-new-jersey.html
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