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LECTURE III.

ON THE SENTENCES TO BE SAID OR SUNG BY THE PRIEST AND CLERKS, WHO MEET AND PRECEDE THE CORPSE.

Faith, Patience, Thankfulness, the Graces of Bereavement.

JOB i. 21.

"THE LORD GAVE, AND THE LORD HATH TAKEN AWAY; BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD."

"THE end of funeral duties," saith Hooker, "is, first, to shew that love towards the party deceased which nature requireth; then to do him that honour which is fit both generally for man, and particularly for the quality of his person; last of all, to testify the care which the Church hath to comfort the living,

and the hope which we all have concerning the resurrection of the dead."

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Now, if this be a true statement (and I think it must approve itself to the reason of every man as such), it cannot be disputed. that our own Service for the Burial of the Dead is admirably adapted to its purpose; seeing that, while it treats the dead in Christ with that reverent care which is meet for the members of the Lord's Body, and gives full scope for the display of affectionate regret on the part of surviving friends, it also provides abundant sources of godly hope and consolation to the mourners in their bereavement, and at the same time does not fail to avail itself of such a solemn opportunity of reminding them of their own duties and responsibilities, as being themselves appointed soon to die, and hereafter to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.

With this view it adapts itself to every feeling which may be expected to arise successively in the heart of a sorrowing kinsman as he accompanies the corpse of his departed relative to the grave; and it speaks,by the way, in the church,-and at the

grave-side, in terms which seem the most appropriate to each situation. Thus, as soon as the funeral train enters upon the consecrated ground of the churchyard, it is met with words of all others the best calculated to stir up the minds of mourners to faith, patience, and thankfulness. In the church, the doctrine of man's mortality, and the certainty of the resurrection, is declared in the fullest and clearest manner in which Scripture has revealed it. While at the grave, by exhortation, by prayer, and by blessing, the bereaved are comforted, and forbidden to sorrow as men that have no hope.

Of these three divisions of the Burial Service it is now my intention to speak at length. And first of the Introductory Sentences, as they are called, which will afford abundant matter for our contemplation on the present occasion.

The law of the Church directs that the priest and clerks shall meet the corpse at the entrance of the churchyard, and going before it, shall say or sing those sentences of Scripture to which I am about to direct your

thoughts. Thus, at the very outset, the Church provides (at least in the ordinary course of circumstances, and where the parochial system is fairly carried out according to her intentions) that those who, in their affliction and bereavement, are come to pay their last sad tribute of respect and love, should be supported in the sharpest portion of their trial by the presence of one who, in his ministerial capacity, was in his degree responsible for the spiritual condition of their deceased relation, as being his appointed minister and pastor. The same individual who, it may be, through the long course of decline and suffering, had stood day by day beside the sick man's bed, and heard his profession of the Catholick Faith, and received the confession of his sins, and listened to his deep ejaculations of remorse and humiliation, and seen his tears, and witnessed his faith and patience, is now at hand to commit him to his peaceful resting-place in humble hope of his resurrection to a blessed immortality the same voice which uttered grave counsels, and kind advice, and mingled instruction with prayers and the comfort of the

Church's absolving words, is now heard once more; and it is no stranger, but a familiar friend,-one who is known to sorrow and sympathize with the bereavement, — that speaks the Church's consolatory salutation to the bereaved: and the hands which, though soon to be stretched forth to consign "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," are recognized as the same which conveyed to the dying man those life-giving elements, to which, when worthily received, the promise is attached, that they who so receive them shall" live for ever," and shall "be raised at the last day" to "life eternal."

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Thus the Church, like Him, her merciful Lord, Who wept at the grave of Lazarus, compassionates our weakness, and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and tends us with a parent's affection. And as He Who died and rose again, vouchsafed after His resurrection to join Himself to the disciples on the road to Emmaus as they walked and were sad, as He talked with them by the way and opened to them the Scriptures, so, as we walk and are sad, doth she send one who shall stand in Christ's place to us, and

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