LECTURE IX.

OF THE ANTHEMS TO BE SAID OR SUNG AT THE GRAVE, WHILE THE CORPSE IS MADE READY TO BE

LAID INTO THE EARTH.

Death Temporal, and Death Eternal.

JOB xiv. 1, 2.

"MAN THAT IS BORN OF A WOMAN IS OF FEW DAYS, AND FULL OF TROUBLE. HE COMETH FORTH LIKE A FLOWER, AND IS CUT DOWN: HE FLEETH ALSO AS A SHADOW, AND CONTINUETH NOT."

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HAVING," to use the words of one of the most eminent of our Ritualists, "acknowledged our deceased friend to have lived and died in the peace of the Church and communion of Saints, by bringing his body into the place wherein his brethren worship God, we now proceed to the grave." The Psalm

1 Comber's Guide to the Temple, iv. 430.

and Lesson being ended, the funeral train is in motion once more, and the corpse is borne forth to its final resting-place.

Few and evil are the days of our pilgrimage, short and quickly traversed are the stages of our journey: but this is the shortest of all. A few steps, and the faded, way-worn form has been carried down the aisle; a few more, and it has reached the grave side. A few simple preparations, and the coffin will be lowered into the earth; a brief interval, and the last visible evidence that one of our fellow-pilgrims has lived and died will be removed from our eyes. What an opportunity is that brief interval for bringing home to the heart of each one present his own true condition, and for putting in his mouth forms of holy prayer in which his heart cannot but join. And well and wisely doth the Church herein discharge her office.

"When they come to the grave," says the Rubric, "while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth, the Priest shall say, or the Priest and Clerks shall sing,"-(for, as been already observed, the voice of melody has never been deemed an inconsistent or

unsuitable addition to the Office for the Dead,-seeing that death to the Christian is but a point between two life-times, and therefore he cannot sorrow for the departed as those who have no hope):

"Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."

First, we are reminded that "man is born of a woman;" and with that thought comes the remembrance of the sad scene in which the first created woman fell from her state of happiness and purity, brought sin, and sorrow, and death into the world, and received her portion of the Creator's curse, that He would greatly multiply her sorrow, and that in sorrow she should bring forth children, who, each in turn, should be partakers of an inheritance of wrath, and transmit to their descendants a legacy of shame, and pain, and dissolution. Yet even in this remembrance there is the comfort of the promise of a future Saviour, Who should bruise the serpent's head; Who, in taking upon

Him to deliver man, should not abhor the Virgin's womb; Who, as Man, born of a woman, should overcome the sharpness of death, and open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

Next, we have the sentence of our race recited in our ears, while the fulfilment of that sentence is brought before our eyes in the coffin that stands beside us, and in the grave at our feet. "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery." Look at the coffin making ready for interment; look beyond it to the graves on every side,-graves of friends, and neighbours, and kinsmen. Let the history of each pass in rapid review before the mind's eye, and what will that history tell you? Some have died young, some old; on some the world has frowned, on some it has smiled; some have been prosperous, some unfortunate; they have varied in their conditions, capacities, tempers, wishes, appetites; and yet not more different than their respective circumstances have been the varities of misery which have come upon them; forms and modes of evil, and affliction, from

within or from without, prepared by their own hands, or by those of others, or sent direct from God;-diseases and pains, sorrows and disquietudes, continually changing, yet continually recurring, have filled up the course of an existence, which, whether it has been confined to a score, or protracted to fourscore years, has still been characterized at its close as short. Youth and

strength have passed away; beauty has faded; riches have made themselves wings; pleasures have palled; love has grown cold; earthly hope has perished. "Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity." All is fleeting, or deceptive, or unsatisfactory; so the generations of old found it; so we have found it for ourselves. "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery!"

"He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay." Many are the comparisons by which the sacred writers press upon us the truth of the shortness of our time in this world. The shadow that flits past and then is lost for ever, the