Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/602

 selfish heart, he was to be one of the greatest, if not the very greatest bishop of his church.

Full of charity and good work, not only to his church, and to his own people, but to all men, he entered upon a great and trying field with great confidence; and never did one achieve a larger or more signal success. Bishop Morris was the personification of modest deportment, and strictly followed the injunctions to "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." But the spirit, the fire, and the power was in him. Endowed with great natural abilities, as one born to command, he assumed the great responsibility of his office with the entire conservation of every faculty, and his whole soul to the service of his church, and his Lord and Master. He brought teachers with him and founded St. Helens hall, which has been a great success as the girls' school of the church. He founded the Bishop Scott grammar school, which has been succeeded by the Hill military school. H^e founded the Good Samaritan hospital, which, with its nurses, training school and home, now covers two city blocks, and representing with its endowed funds, over half a million dollars.

Like St. Paul, Bishop Morris traveled far and wide over his vast diocese, covering the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, preaching everywhere in school houses, ware houses, cross roads, and gathering in the scattered sheep of the wandering flock. His services as a bishop outranked all others of his church in length of service, and far surpassed all others in the results achieved. He came to be the oldest bishop in the church ; and if the position had been regarded with the consideration and dignity that attaches in the mother church of England, Benjamin Wistar Morris, the bishop of Oregon, was the Primate of the Protestant Episcopal church of America. Founder of hundreds of churches, and of hospitals and schools, head of all the churches of his denomination, living and working up to the age of four score and six, passing away full of honors and years with the love and respect of all men, and at his own request, buried in a plain pine box — what a glorious life and glorious end — something for Portland and Oregon to be proud of for all her future years.

Bishop Morris was a lineal descendant of Robert Morris, the financier of the American revolution, the intimate and trusted friend of George Washington ; and who, as furnishing "the sinews of the war" stood next to Benjamin Franklin in the matchless triumvirate of Washington, Franklin and Morris, carried the infant colonies through the seven years' war, and founded this great nation. Bishop Morris married a lineal descendant of Caesar Rodney, (a sister of the Misses Rodney of St. Helens hall) one of the signers of the immortal Declaration of Independence, and being the signer that made a majority in its adoption, and sundered the ties between England and her rebellious colonies.

It cannot be out of place to connect the history of this far distant western city, through the blood and lineage of those who have so signally labored to found the institutions of religion and education, with the soul stirring events that called our nation into existence.

When the Declaration of Independence was coming up for the final vote for adoption or rejection, Caesar Rodney, a delegate from Delaware was absent at home eighty miles from Philadelphia. A messenger had been dispatched to warn him of the danger of defeat, and at which he at once mounted his favorite horse and sped away to Independence hall. From Frederick Myron Colby's vivid description of that ride we copy the following lines: