God, the real passionate love of God for
men--not for the chosen few, but the weak, the broken, the
struggling--those in sorrow and the hungry--the love of God that
drove him to lay down his life as few men had laid down their
lives before. He gave of himself without stint, rejoicing in the
chance to serve his God and his fellowmen with his whole heart
and soul, with such passionate devotion that at last broke
through his own conventional beliefs and tore them to shreds, and
made him the voice of the living God, to us in St. George's, to
New York and to America.

In the great days of his preaching, he took us who were his
clergy--young, inexperienced and conceited--and made us over. He
took us, to whom religion was a profession, and made of it a
passion. He was ever patient with us, giving us his best; day
after day walking with us around Stuyvesant Square in the
morning, sometimes for hours, and then pouring out to us as we
walked the best religious thought of his time, his judgment on
the questions of the day, his interpretations of religion and the
tremendous work of the church as a gift that God had put into the
souls of men for service to their fellowmen.

He told us of his thought for men and women, of the problems of
the time, of the problems of the church--not conventional, but
vital, not formal, but distinctly real--and then he would take us
into his study and we would kneel there. And never have I heard a
man pray as the rector prayed--without any of the ecclesiastical
technique and form of prayer, without any formal discussions of
the value of prayer, but pouring out the things that we had been
talking of; as real to God as they were real to us, bringing into
them God; God's companionship, God's sympathy, God's
understanding and patience; God's ruthless will that we should
love our fellowmen and serve our fellowmen--without name, without
a distinction.

That is the vivid life, a little of it, that we lived with, which
made God real to New York and to us here at St. George's, and to
his clergy. God has taken him home, and we meet here, every one
of us, because the rector--broken though he was in these later
years--because the rector, whose great and lovely smile we had
loved to see, as we had loved just to touch his hand to gain
strength, courage, faith and joy--because we cannot do that any
more. His work is done and God gives