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CHAPTER XV.

FUNERAL SERMONS.

"There is a spell, by Nature thrown
Around the voiceless dead,
Which seems to soften censure's tone
And guard the dreamless bed
Of those, who, whatsoe'er they were,

Wait Heaven's conclusive audit there."-QUARLES.

I.

MONG the many funeral sermons which every age has left on record since the invention of printing, some have taken their rank in the permanent literature of the country, and embalmed imperishably the memory of the departed. Had the Countess of Carberry never figured among Milton's beautiful creations as the Lady in the Masque of Comus, she would have been remembered while the language lasts as the Lady of the Golden Grove, of whom Jeremy Taylor said, "As she related to God in the offices of religion, she was even and constant, silent and devout, prudent and material. She loved what she now enjoys, and she feared what she never felt. And God did for her what she never did expect. Her fears went beyond all her evil, and yet the good which she hath received was, and is, and ever shall be beyond all her hopes. She

lived as we all should live; she died as I fain would

die.

Et cum supremos Lachesis perneverit annos
Non aliter cineres mando jacere meos.'

II. It would be severe criticism, indeed, to blame any praise consistent with the truth, when it might console a mourner, and the eulogized could never hear it. Hooker, however, has embodied a defence of funeral sermons in one which he preached over a lady whose name is unrecorded; and if the defence has all his magnificent strength, the consolation must have fallen on a husband's or a father's ear like the whisper of an angel. Naming patience, I name that virtue which only hath power to stay our souls from being over-excessively troubled; a virtue wherein if ever any, surely that soul had good experience, which extremity of pains having chased out of the tabernacle of this flesh, angels, I nothing doubt, have carried into the bosom of her father Abraham. The death of the saints is precious in his sight, and shall it seem unto us superfluous at such times as these are, to hear in what manner they have ended their lives? The Lord himself hath not disdained so exactly to register in the Book of Life, after what sort his servants have closed up their days on earth, that he descendeth even to their very meanest actions; what meat they have longed for in their sickness; what they have spoken unto their children, kinsfolks, and friends; where they have willed their dead carcasses to be laid; how they have framed their wills and testaments; yea, the very turning of their faces to this side or that, the setting of their eyes, the degrees whereby their natural heat hath departed from them; their cries, their groans, their pantings, breathings, and last gaspings, he hath most solemnly commended unto the memory of all generations. The

Taylor's Funeral Sermon on the Countess Carberry.

care of the living both to live and die well must needs be somewhat increased when they know that their departure shall not be folded up in silence; but the ears of many be made acquainted with it. Again, when they hear how mercifully God hath dealt with others in the hour of their last need, besides the praise which they give to God, and the joy which they have, or should have, by reason of their fellowship and communion of saints, is not their hope also much confirmed against the day of their own dissolution? Finally, the sound of these things doth not so pass the ears of them that are most loose and dissolute of life, but it causeth them some time or other to wish in their hearts, oh! that we might die the death of the righteous, and that our end might be like his! Howbeit, because, to spend herein many words would be to strike even as many wounds into their minds, whom I rather wish to comfort; therefore, concerning this virtuous gentlewoman only this little I speak, and that of knowledge, she lived a dove, and died a lamb. And if, amongst so many virtues, hearty devotion towards God, towards poverty tender compassion, motherly affection towards servants, towards friends ever serviceable kindness, mild behaviour, and harmless meaning towards all; if, where so many virtues were eminent, any be worthy of especial mention, I wish her dearest friends of that sex to be her nearest followers in two things: silence, saving only where duty did exact speech; and patience, even then, when extremity of pains did enforce grief. Blessed are they that die in the Lord. And concerning the dead which are blessed, let not the hearts of any living be over-charged with grief, nor over-troubled."*

III. It is true that neither in Taylor's, nor Hooker's, nor any other age, were funeral sermons the most impartial witnesses to the characters of the dead. The Remedy against Sorrow and Fear.

natural wish to say nothing unfavourable of him whose opportunities of doing good or ceasing to do evil are ended, to console those who, whatever he may have been to others, found him their friend or relative; and to follow out every theme which could be suggested by the charity that thinketh no evil, these would bias a good man and give a colour to his discourse. Other motives, however, of a less unexceptionable kind, may have produced more palpable results. It appears to have been customary to procure an efficient preacher at the obsequies of any person of importance. In an age when relationship was more thought of than it is at present, flattery to the deceased might have a more extensive influence on the living than we can now imagine; and to take the lowest motive, the bargain may have been, no praise, no pay. That there were preachers who were accessible to such motives their brethren declared with the utmost candour. "We have our noble and royal preachers that will in a funeral sermon tell of the good deeds of many blasphemers, and misers, and covetous, and filthy, and ignorant, and gamesters, and I think, for money, of witches, and conjurors, and rebels, pronounce in the pulpit that they are in heaven."*

IV. Of course it was easy and inoffensive on such occasions to moralize on the evanescence of the world, and ask, "When shall we understand that this life is as a vapour, as a shadow, passing and fleeing away, as a fading flower, as a bubble rising on the water; if not now in the decaying, passing, and vanishing away of it? when shall we forsake this wicked world, if not now when it forsaketh us?"+ But any practical application was a delicate point, unless the preacher dared recommend his audience to live like the departed. Instances Topsell's xxxv. Sermon.

† Nowell's Homily of the Justice of God.

do occur, however, in which preachers have met this difficulty very dexterously; of this Grindal's sermon on the Emperor Ferdinand I. is one of the most remarkable. At other times, finding that they had to deal with a Gordian knot, they cut it asunder. Babington (who, by the way, was then on the point of leaving his Welsh bishopric for one in England) preached on the demise of some gentleman in the principality, whose character he got rid of thus:- "His birth and descent by father and mother, his kindred and friends by either side, his alliances by marriage, with such like, they are things known even to the very younglings here; which skill, not only concerning him, but of all others of any note in this country, when I speak of, Lord! how it striketh my heart within to think and consider, not only how little skill, but how little will also, is in many of us to be acquainted with better matter; for you know it as well as I, and with grief, too, I assure myself, that too many amongst us able very perfectly to discourse of these perishing pedigrees, which wise men have thought things little belonging to us, if they might have the whole country for their pains, are not able to tell the descent of either patriarch, prophet, or apostle, or any man of note in the scripture, much less can they utter the holy and comfortable points of salvation belonging necessarily unto them."*

v. The avowal of ignorance, of course, relieves the preacher from all details, and acquits him of compromising any principle. In some cases, however, this plan was wholly unavailable. In notices of departed kings it was impossible not to give them some definite character. It has long puzzled the curious in such matters how it was contrived that almost every state prisoner executed in the reigns which are here referred to, died protesting his sense of the clemency and justice * G. Babington, Third Sermon.