Archives > Archive:Extracts > Archive:The Whitney Family of Connecticut > The Whitney Family of Connecticut, page 263
The Whitney Family of Connecticut
by S. Whitney Phoenix
(New York: 1878)
Transcribed by Robert L. Ward.
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Whitney Family.
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263
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perform the great amount of labor which he kept up during more than a quarter of a century.
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"He also possessed a strong intellect, a well-balanced mind, and a sound judgment, united with firmness of purpose. He never engaged in visionary schemes; his projects were generally wise and well-digested, and with steadiness of purpose carried into execution.
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"He had a warm heart His friendship was ardent. He was a whole soul man. In whatever he engaged, all his energies were summoned. What his hands found to do, he did with all his might. No trait in his character was more prominent than that of enlarged benevolence--a benevolence bounded only by his ability to confer happiness. It was this that prompted him to abandon friends and country, and all the blessings of Christian society, and cast in his lot with a little band, who purposed to carry the Gospel of Jesus to the darkened savages of Hawaii. It was this which led him so often to strip himself of comforts and bestow them on his friends whom he thought more needy than himself. Few have become acquainted with him, who have not received substantial tokens of his kindness and friendship. Most of the permanent houses of public worship on the islands contain a deposit from his benevolence. Few have been found more ready than he, to deny themselves, in order to do good to others. He embarked in the missionary work as a work of self-denial, and cheerfully adopted the resolution that he would engage in no business for the purpose of private gain. His whole life was an illustration of this resolution, and on his dying bed he charged his wife, saying, 'You will remember, we own nothing at Waimea. The house, herd, &c., are, all, the property of the American Board.' His treasures were amassed where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal. There he set his affections, and thither his aspirations ascended to the last.
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"Confidence in God sustained him amid all the trials through which he passed. He was calm and unmoved, however dark the clouds that overhung the horizon. This confidence was the legitimate fruit of walking with God. He told his daughter, on his dying bed, that from the time that he first covenanted to be the Lord's, he had never, for a single day, neglected prayer. That God whom he had honored in secret, rewarded him openly, and took him up from us in triumph to His rest above.
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"While we mourn his loss to his family and to the church, we would rejoice in his blessed triumph, and would gather encouragement from his victory to banish the fear of death and trust in the same almighty hand that gently led him across the Jordan, hoping that we too shall come off more than conquerors through Him that hath loved us and given Himself for us. Let us, therefore, follow in the bright path which he trod; and ere long, we too shall win the victory.
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"'Mark the perfect man and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace.'"
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