ANOTHER bright star has gone down to rise no more. On the morning of the 17th of May, 1876, Rev. J. H. Hunter, in the 24th year of his age, rounded his life to a premature end. He joined the McMinnville Presbytery at its fall session of 1874. He read two pieces, and was licensed five days before his death, in the same Presbytery. He left the Vanderbilt University, of Nashville, to attend his Presbytery, suffering with some kind of brain disease, which brought him to a very sudden death. His death as indeed a shock to all the members of his Presbytery, as well as to all his relatives and many friends. To speak well of the deserving dead, is surely no crime. Hence, we are forced to say, of a truth Bro. Hunter was a good and talented man. We all looked with much pride down his future, when he would be one of God's ablest expounders of divine truth. But our blessed Master saw proper to silence his voice on earth, that it might ring amid the mighty mingling in the celestial world.
Words may not tell how the triumph of eternity shall break the trance of time. How the dwellers in the heavens, and the tenants of celestial scenery shall look forth upon the bright investiture of undecaying light and love. With our beloved brother the pilgrimage of life is over. His conquered foe must be ours; and, to learn what he knows, we must pass through the same, and when we do, and the inevitable death-lot shall throw our thrilling gaze athwart the gathering gloom, may God grant that our anxious, throbbing hearts may pillow themselves upon the bosom of Jesus.
To his dear parents, relatives, and friends, I say, as Jesus said to the weeping mother at Nain, "Weep not." His pilgrimage is done, the war is over, the victory is won, "he is absent from the body and present with the Lord.
"Clouds and darkness round us press;
Would we have one sorrow less?
All the sharpness of the cross,
All that tells the world is lost,
Death and darkness, and the tomb,
Pain us only 'Till he domes!'"
[Source: The Cumberland Presbyterian, June 29, 1876, page 2]