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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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560 Review . —Rev * J . Johns ' * Funeral Discourse for Mrs . Davy .
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timely loss , and united the virtues of the other sex to those of her own , " " Many of you have seen her in the maturity of life , health aud usefulness . — I have only known her in her years of decline . Of all that she was in brighter days , I have only looked on the venerable ruin ; but that ruin was venerable indeed : and the wiuters of almost a
century had left that behind them which , once beheld , could never be forgotten . Her heart was young , warm and pious to the last ; and they who beheld her will often remember the brow , so eloquent of the peace of virtue , and so prophetic of the rest of heaven . It was not my privilege to see her on the death-bed ; but I have been told—and did not
require to be told it—that the calm of death was beautiful there— -of death , my friends , did I , or ought 1 to say ? Oh ! it is not to a transition blessed and gentle like hers , that we ought to attach the name of dying . Rather let us say , like our Lord over Lazarus , when we speak of her soft and hallowed repose , — ' Our
friend sleepeth . '—She sleepeth , and her slumbers are long , dark and profound , but they are also sorrowless , and calm and holy . She sleepeth , and not a dream can break upon her repose , —but the sunshine of hope and the sraiie of heaven are bright upon the cold and narrow
bed . Her aged lip had tasted the dregs of the cup , her trembling foot had reached the barriers of mortality , and who wquld , call her back , not to enjoy but to enauv $ > since she has wasted all the days of her appointed time ? Oh ! what , my friends , when the honey is exhausted , what is there to attach the bee to the
flower ?*"— " In such a case who can regret that her change is come ? Or , if it be not to such that the palm of eternity is given , ' who then can be saved ? " Link after link is struck from the chain of life—flower after flower drops away from the wreath of love—and it is the lofty duty of the mourner to prove , that all these sorrowful but merciful
admonitions have not been given and received in vain . They should teach us not to remit , if we have commencednot to defer if we have neglected—the all-involving improvement of our appointed time . They should impiess upon us , that mortality is not an insulated , but a relative state- —that life should be
the germ of an immortal flower , and time the pathway to the paradise of God . In the spirit of these sublime convictions , it should be our prayer , under every successive bereavement , so to be taught to number our days that we may apply o > ur hearts to wisdom : and , with the relics of the departed , we should endea-
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vour to bury our frailties , as the holiest evidence of surviving love . t 4 it is not in life only , my fellow-believers , that we are to * wait all the days of our appointed time , till our change corned—This must also be done in the grave- There the hallowed dust , which
has so newly been remanded to its primal mould , reposes with the pious dead of all ages and climes till the magnificent system of Providence be accomplished , and the eventful consummation of prophecy shall arrive . "— " Centuries may pass over her narrow bed , the green trees
beside her place of rest may mingle with the consecrated earth beneath them , and the stately pile in whose shadow she reposes may crumble , stone by stone , under the finger of time—all these may pass away , and fade from the face of the earth like a forgotten dream : but amid these prospects let us remember , with deep
and thrilling emotion , that the word of our God shall stand for ever . Still , still , my brethren , over all the wreck of change and time , the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth ; and the voice which said , * Let there be light , ' in the infancy of nature , will repeat the lofty fiat over the clouds of the tomb . He will not leave the souls
of His children in the grave , nor suffer His holy ones to see corruption . "— " The pale cold brow will be radiant with life , the clouded eye will be bright with celestial smiles , the tremulous foot will be elastic with perpetual youth , and the soul , never more to be enervated by
decay , will partake of happiness transcending its hopes , , and of glory beyond its dreams . The burial-ground of the just and the pure , is , in the noblest sense , the garden of God . There reposes the
seed which is destined to produce the future blossoms of heaveu ; those bldssoms of the spirit , which will bloom under the bright shade of the tree of life , and render back again to the breezes of paradise the incense borrowed from the breath of
heaven . After speaking of the duty and the use of grief , when it is excited by love and sanctified by religion , he adds , : " The great gulf which is fixed between life and the grave ought to make us cling more to the remembrance of the lost ,
since it is all of them that now in this world remains . The claims of past affection should never be less sacred , because the dead are , unable to enforce them ; and the bower which memory
builds over the urn , though it may and must be dark with sorrow , ' yet oh ! let it ever be green with love . " u Return then , my friends , to the la-
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1824, page 560, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2528/page/48/
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