By JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau

PROVIDENCE — John Hubbard Chafee's death was mourned and his life celebrated yesterday in a 19th-Century Gothic church, with the recollections of his first-born, the salutes of his comrades and the rites of his Anglican forebears.

Grace Church was packed with a congregation of 800 -- from little-known former State House workers to the president of the United States -- who joined in tributes to Chafee the wrestling champion and war hero, the governor and senator, the husband, father and citizen.

``The nature of his life . . . the nature of his work'' was that ``he bound his family together and his friends. He bound us together as citizens and politicians and senators,'' said the celebrant, former Sen. John C. Danforth, of Missouri, an Episcopalian priest.

``That was his special work. He would never split us apart,'' said Danforth, Chafee's closest Senate friend and one of the dwindling brand of temperate Republicans who looked to the Rhode Islander as their leader.

The day was steeped in the ``high church'' Episcopal traditions that Chafee loved, including mighty blasts from the pipes of the Casavant organ in Grace Church and Scripture rendered in the English of King James.

But martial themes also pervaded the tributes to a man whose public service began at age 19, on the bloody beaches of Guadalcanal. Marines carried Chafee's body through its appointed rounds; the secretaries of the Defense and Navy Departments joined the commandant of the Marines in the brownstone church; the congregation rose as one to sing ``The Navy Hymn.''

The procedings were buoyed by the respectful but casual crowds that watched the funeral procession, by the presence of Chafee's handsome grandchildren, by the congregation's laughter at the mid-service reflection by his son Zechariah.

The eldest Chafee son recalled that the senator had his Boy Scout manual squirreled within easy reach in his Senate office. ``I must say,'' deadpanned the bespectacled Chafee, ``his skeptical children had some problem reconciling the cautionary Scout motto, `Be Prepared' with my father's brisk assertion, ``It will all work out, stick with me -- here we go!''

That triggered a burst of knowing laughter from former Chafee subordinates, peers and superiors who had obeyed the same cheerful admonition countless times over the years.

THE DAY'S memorials began at 9:40 a.m. as the Chafee clan of about 35 entered the State House, led by Virginia Chafee, the senator's wife of 49 years and ``the beating heart of our family,'' as Zechariah called her later. She entered arm-in-arm with her son John and smiled as they climbed the stairs.

A hushed crowd of about 200 stood vigil outside during the family's private ceremony beneath the marble dome where Chafee began his political life more than four decades ago.

The crowd had doubled half an hour later, when six Marines, marching in lock-step, bore the flag-draped coffin from the State House to the bed of a four-wheeled carriage.

A light morning fog still overhung the city as the funeral procession began from the marble rotunda where Chafee's body lay in state Friday. His carriage was pulled by

pair of tawny draft horses, their drivers clad in formal wear and top hats.

Sunlight glowed through the mist as the senator's daughter and four sons walked after the carriage, down Smith Hill, along Canal Street and into Kennedy Plaza toward the brownstone Episcopal church. The rest of the family followed in their long, black cars.

Thousands of citizens lined the parade route, many trailing the cortege at a respectful distance, cameras in hand. Joe Bollinger, of West Warwick, stood with his wife, Lori, and their two small daughters. ``It's just our way of thanking him for what he did for the state,'' Lori Bollinger said of Chafee, who served three terms as governor and 23 years as senator.

Hundreds of mourners passed through security checkpoints and into Grace Church to await the arrival of President Clinton, three planeloads of dignitaries from Washington, and Chafee's procession.

The congregation included representatives of each of the state's 39 cities and towns, all of its general officers and many of its senators and representatives. It included hosts of Providence and Washington lobbyists, military brass, former Chafee staffers of all ranks and represenatives of every sort of business and interest group.

On hand were Henry D. Sharpe Jr., the former chief of the Brown & Sharpe tool company where Chafee's late father had served as vice president and director, and Bruce G. Sundlun, the former Outlet Company executive and governor whom Chafee saved from drowning in an ice-skating accident at Camp Yawgoog when they were boys.

Also attending was Rep. Claudine Schneider, a Chafee protege during her 12 years in in Washington. Schneider, who has been gravely ill, lives in Colorado.

There, too, with his wife, Nuala, was the frail-looking former Sen. Claiborne Pell, 80, who defeated Chafee in one of modern Rhode Island's most storied campaigns.

A FORWARD quardrant of the church filled suddenly just before 11 a.m., with the entrance of about half the members of the Senate, and about a dozen members of the House and the Cabinet. They were all seated according to strict protocol -- Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D. in the second pew on the right -- as the New England Chamber Brass Ensemble played heroic preludes by Georg Philipp Telemann.

Moments later, President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the nave of the church, escorted by The Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, the Bishop of Rhode Island, and took the first pew.

The Grace Church Boys Choir was singing Bach's ``Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'' as Mrs. Chafee walked down the polished-stone center aisle of the church, arm-in-arm with her grandson, Cyrus Nassikas, in blue blazer, khaki trousers and bowl-cut light brown hair.

They filed, with the rest of the Chafees, into the first rows of walnut pews on the left.

Precisely at 11, Danforth said, ``Please stand,'' walked down the aisles in a black cassock, white surplice and black stole around his neck. Then came Chafee's coffin, led by torch bearers, and carried by his four sons, his son-in-law and his eldest nephew.

Chafee's arrival beneath the Stars and Stripes suddenly lit the somber assemblage of gray- and black-suited mourners with color. Sunlight was streaming into the chancel, through a stained-glass depiction of the Crucifixion.

Tall candles flanked an ornate cross on the altar. Danforth and Bishop Wolf, now wearing her white-and-gold mitre and vestments and wielding her gold crozier, stood atop eight marble steps in the chancel, framed by the choir and torch-bearers.

The organ blared the opening notes of ``God of Our Fathers'' and the 90-minute service was launched.

Themes of resurrection predominated. But Zechariah Chafee's reflection was, in essence, his father's life story. Warwick Mayor Lincoln D. Chafee's recitation was of a favorite poem of his father (``Old Ironsides,'' by Oliver Wendell Holmes) and Danforth's homily was a reprise of the principles whereby Chafee lived.

Danforth stressed the joy in Chafee but noted that he ``bore his share of pain,'' including political defeat, the horror of war and the death of his young daughter Tribbie, in a horseback-riding accident 31 years ago.

Perhaps the most moving moment was Zechariah Chafee's portrait of his parents, at rest and still in love.

``See him now on the summer deck of the two-room cabin with the wood stove, where he and Mother live when they're back in Rhode Island,'' the son said, conjuring up the Chafee camp in North Kingstown, across the Potowomut River from their Warwick farm.

``The sun sweeps low over the meadows on the far side of the river. The air is still, the tide is high. Egrets hunt along the marshy shallows,'' Chafee continued, adding that cheese and crackers are on the table and ``bourbon glows amber in his glass.''

Chafee closed with the story of how his father treasured a photograph of an official event that featured him laughing with President Ronald Reagan, Republican Senators Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

Reagan had signed it, ``John -- Sometimes it is fun, isn't it?''

The congregation laughed, Zechariah Chafee asked the question again and then answered: ``Dad, when you were around, it sure was.''

OUTSIDE, quiet prevailed in a security perimeter of several blocks around the church. But as on the cortege route, hundreds of citizens kept watch at the police cordons. One 75-year-old man outside the church suffered a heart attack shortly after the service began. He was taken by rescue to Rhode Island Hospital, where he was recuperating last night.

Inside, the brass ensemble struck up ``The Marine Corps Hymn,'' as six Marines wheeled the coffin and Danforth flashed a thumbs-up sign to the family.

The torch-bearer escorted the coffin, carried now by six Marines, and Danforth followed. Then the Chafees joined the recessional, with Mrs. Chafee again in the lead, on the arm of her son John.

Just as the last notes of the hymn died, the lowest of the 16 church bells began to ring from the spire. The bell tolled once for each of Chafee's 77 years.

Mr. and Mrs. Clinton met in the church foyer for several minutes with the Chafee family. The President gave his condolences to every member of the family, paying special attention to the 12 grandchildren.

Outside the church, Mr. Clinton stared for a long moment at the flag-draped coffin, now back aboard its carriage, then boarded his limousine to be whisked off with the first lady.

The congressional delegation followed the Clintons back to Green State Airport for their return flight to Washington. Many members of the congregation -- including Rhode Island friends and dignitaries, retired to the State House Rotunda, where the family held a reception for more than an hour.

The Chafees left the State House at 3 p.m. and boarded the black cars, with a state police escort, for the trip home to the family farm in Warwick. The mourners walked to the burial plot across the road from Goddard State Park. Danforth intoned the ancient Episcopalian prayers of The Committal. ``In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,'' he said in part, ``we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.''

A lone Marine bugler in white cap and dress blues played taps. Seven more Marines fired their M-1 rifles three times each -- the traditional last salute of ``three volleys of seven.''

Out of the southeast roared five F/A-18 warplanes from the the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, Va.. They flew the ``missing man'' formation -- five fighters passing overhead, one peeling off and into the blue.

Beneath a lowering sun, the family stood in the meadow across the Potowomut River from the summer cabin, near the marshes where the egrets hunt. There, under a great spreading tree beside his daughter's grave, John H. Chafee was buried.

- With reports from Peter B. Lord, Scott MacKay, Timothy Barmann, Tracy Breton, Michael Smith, Mary Beth Meehan, John Freidah and Doane Hulick.