a living perpetual epistle...

I was very gratified to receive yesterday an email from a minister, not Unitarian, who discovered James Freeman Clarke through this space. Readers of this blog and of Wonderful Epoch, know of the importance of JFC in my own spiritual and religious life.  One of the many reasons this is so was his true ecumenical spirit both within Unitarianism and the larger body of Christ.  He embodied a spirit of Christian unity that is all too sadly lacking. James Freeman Clarke died on this day in 1888.  These words were spoken in a sermon by the great Boston Episcopalian preacher Phillips Brooks shortly after JFC's death...

" He belonged to the whole Church of Christ. Through him his Master spoke to all who had ears to hear. Especially, he was a living perpetual epistle to the Church of God which is in Boston. It is a beautiful, a solemn moment when the city, the Church, the world, gather up the completeness of a finished life like his, and thank God for it, and place it in the shrine of memory, to be a power and a revelation thenceforth so long as city and Church and world shall last. It is not the losing, it is rather the gaining, the assuring, of his life. Whatever he has gone to in the great mystery beyond, he remains a word of God here in the world he loved. Let us thank our Heavenly Father for the life, the work, the inspiration, of his true servant, his true saint, James Freeman Clarke."

Blessings