During the last morning of his life, as Buchman lay between two worlds, he took half an hour, interrupted by moments of pain, to say, 'I want Britain to be governed by men governed by God. I want to see the world governed by men governed by God. Why not let God run the whole world?'

Buchman's funeral service took place in Allentown and he was buried in the quiet family plot beside his parents. The occasion brought people from many countries, as had his other visits home through the years. With exceptions like David Miller, the editor of the Morning Call, and his class-mates Arthur Keller and Nimson Eckhart, his fellow townsfolk had often not known what to make of the people he used to bring home - among them strange exotic creatures clothed in the national costumes of Switzerland, India or Japan for some public occasion. His college, Muhlenberg, had given him an honorary doctorate in his late forties, but he was 80 before he was thought worthy of the Muhlenberg 'Mule' which was reserved for those considered to have rendered really distinguished service to the community. Now, however, the people of Allentown packed the church and an adjacent hall for the service.

The messages to his funeral, no less than those who attended it, showed the volume and variety of his friendships. The boy who sat next to him at high school, the hall porter in Utrecht to whom he gave a book in 1936, the captain of the ship which took him to Australia in 1956, and the spokesmen of the Stoney Indians who cabled, 'The whole world is an orphan as we felt when we heard of his death', were among the thousands who sent cables and letters. There were messages from Carl Hambro, Adenauer, Schuman, U Nu, Kishi, the King of Morocco, the rival chiefs of the Lulua and Baluba tribes of the Congo, and the President and Vice-President of Cyprus. Saragat expressed 'the deep sorrow of the Italian Social Democrats and my family', and former President René Coty of France called Buchman 'the perfect apostle of moral revolution'. The hundreds of newspaper obituaries varied from generous appreciation through measured comment to Driberg's article which concluded that history would remember him, if at all, 'by his egregious statement, "I thank God for a man like Adolf Hiltler"'.1

Buchman’s will was as simple as his possessions. He only owned the title of his family home in Allentown and two bank accounts: a personal one containing a few hundred dollars which he had not had time to give away, and another holding some thousands given to him on his recent birthday to be used, at his discretion, for Moral Re-Armament. His will read: 'I wish I had silver and gold for each one, but since my resources are so strictly limited, I give, devise and bequeath all my estate, whatsoever and wheresoever it may be, unto "Moral Re-Armament" absolutely. There are many I should like to have included in a will like this, but I want all to feel they have a share as they partake of the priceless boon which has come to them and to me through the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament. They can best perpetuate this gift by carrying forward a philosophy that is adequate for a world crisis and that will, at last, bring the nations to the long-looked-for Golden Age ushered in by the greatest revolution of all time whereby the Cross of Christ shall transform the world.'

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