The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 1, July 1897 - April, 1898 Page: 187

J. Pinckney Henderson.

187

J. PINCKNEY HENDERSON.
An Address Delivered on the Occasion of the Obsequies in Memory
of General Henderson, August 21st, 1858.*
F. B. SEXTON.
Ladies, Fellow-Citizens, and Brother Masons:
The wisdom, no less than the goodness and mercy, of Almighty
God, are eminently exhibited in the varied and numberless forms
in which the solemn thought of death is presented to, and with-
drawn from, our consideration. It is continually before us, yet
ever absent from us. Decay and death are written upon every
falling leaf and faded flower, while every joyous spring-time, every
bright rosebud that lifts its gilded petals to the morning sun,
speaks to us of life-hopeful, expansive, unending life. Were it
otherwise, and were the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the
cares and delights, the ambitions and disappointments of this life
the only objects which claimed our attention, or awakened our in-
terest, we should be but illy prepared for the great change which
is to sever our connection with all of them; while, on the other
hand, were the pathway of our terrestrial pilgrimage entirely walled
in with tombs, and spectres and winding sheets, were all our
wreaths of laurel transmuted into wreaths of cypress-the atmos-
phere of our being would be so overcast with gloom, our reflections
would take such pallid and sombre hues, that we could never fulfill
the practical duties of life; we could never consummate the useful,
benevolent and glorious purposes to which, in the economy of the
Grand Artificer of the Universe, we have been dedicated. Truly,
we should say with the Royal Psalmist of Israel, "Oh the depth of
the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of Go-d! how unsearch-
able are His judgments and His ways past finding out!"
* This address has, through lapse of time, become historical in itself,
aside from the facts given relative to General Henderson. It is there-
fore published entire.-PUBLICATION COMMITTEE.