MY DEAR E.

LETTER XXIV.

As death is one of the very few certainties to which a minister can look forward among his people, when he is ordained, and as you will every year be called on to bury many of your congregation, I shall devote this letter to the subject of funerals.

And my first remark is, that I hope you will use your influence against unnecessarily appointing them on the Sabbath. I do not know how it is in L

but in some places there are many more burials on the Lord's day, than on any other day of the week. This may be owing, in part, to an impression, that the sanctity of the day somehow sanctifies the funeral services; but I think the main reason is, that people are more at leisure to attend on that day, than on any other, and that many consider it is a saving of time, to do up as much of this business as they can, before the secular labors of the week are begun, or rather after they are finished. In some cases too, a desire to have a large funeral may have its influence upon the families and friends of the deceased, in selecting the Sabbath, when either Saturday or Monday would have answered just as well. But whatever the cause or causes may be, it would be easy to show, that the practice is liable to many serious objections. Some of these it will be directly in my way to urge, should I live to address a series

of letters to the churches and congregations, with which I was once so happily connected. At present, I shall only say, that as the ordinary labors of the Sabbath will commonly demand all your strength, and as funerals can rarely be attended without a considerable addition to these labors, the proper care of your health requires you to postpone them if you can. In some cases, I know, the burial services can neither be hastened nor put off. It is proper, on every account, that they should be attended on the Sabbath, and you should by no means shrink from the duty. But when there is no necessity for it; when the funeral might just as well be attended on Saturday, or put off till Monday, you may with great propriety recommend and request it.

It is the custom, in some places, to require funeral sermons not only for adults but for children also: and in large congregations, this custom is extremely onerous upon the ministry. It is not very uncommon for a pastor to have thirty or forty funerals during a year in his own parish, besides many others out of it. Now to prepare and preach as many discourses as there are deaths, happening, as they often do, when a minister has more on his hands than he can accomplish, or when he is already worn down with labor, is a great task. And why should such a burden be imposed, especially upon a young man? Are the advantages of preaching, in every house of mourning, so great, that you ought cheerfully to perform the labor, even though it should interfere with other duties, or press you harder than you can safely bear? Certainly there are no occasions which bring us so

near the eternal world, as when we meet to bury our friends and neighbors, and we literally stand upon the side of the open grave. Every such occasion, no doubt, calls for appropriate religious services. It does not follow, however, that there should always be a sermon. Circumstances may be such, that it could scarcely be omitted, without a manifest loss of the right impression. My own view of the case is, (and such has been my practice,) that it is best on some striking occasions to preach, in the church, or at the house of the deceased. But I do not think, that if you were ever so well able to to prepare and deliver a suitable discourse, whenever a death occurs in your congregation, it would be profitable. There must, after a little while, be a great sameness in the topics and thoughts, if not in the language also. In spite of your best efforts to give variety to your funeral discourses, they would ere long become like a mournful tale, which has so often been told, as to lose its effect. A better way, it seems to me, is, at the interment of children, and ordinarily of adults, to read a suitable portion of scripture, and to follow the reading with an appropriate address of a few minutes, or half an hour, according to circumstances. I should be sorry to have you ever attend a funeral, without availing yourself of the opportunity to impress truth upon the minds of the living, in a few words at least; and there will doubtless be favorable opportunities, for bringing the awful realities of death, judgment and eternity to bear upon individuals, who never attend church, and whom you can never hope to reach at any other time.

When these opportunities arise, as they may, within a stone's throw of your church, or as they are more likely to occur, in remote districts of your parish, I would advise you to make the most of them. Many of the individuals, who have been drawn together by relationship to the afflicted family, or by other accidental causes, you may never see again, till you meet them at the judgment; and who can tell, but that the Holy Spirit may apply the truth to some of their consciences, and they may be saved?

I meant to have said a few words upon giving characters at funerals. This is treading upon very delicate ground. Now and then a case will occur, in which you can do it with entire safety. The character may be so faultless, and the individual may have been so universally beloved, that an extended enumeration of his virtues may find a response in every bosom. These however are the exceptions. Most men are too imperfect to be held up as models even in that hour when their virtues are most vividly remembered. And when you have once begun to praise the dead, where will you stop? Every body will, ere long, expect something like a funeral eulogy, when a friend is taken away; many will be very much dissatisfied if you fall below their estimate of his character, and since it will often be impossible for you to come up to it with a clear conscience, why not in most cases be silent? Say what you will, 'you cannot make one hair white or black"-you cannot alter the condition of the dead. It is too late. Their account is sealed up to the day of judgment. The decision is already made for

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eternity. "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still and he that is holy, let him be holy still."

But the greatest objection to giving characters, except in cases of decided and eminent piety, lies in the injury which it may do to the living. Whenever you attempt it, you will feel constrained to make the sketch as flattering as you can, and will be very apt to leave the impression, that you hope it is well with them, though they made no profession of religion, and though it is generally understood, that to the last there was no evidence of any great moral change in their views or feelings. If at their funerals you virtually send them to heaven, either in your sermons or your prayers, their unconverted acquaintances will infer, that they too may expect a similar passport, should you ever be called to bury them.

I know how hard it is, when a circle of mourners are bowed down into the dust, and your sympathies are strongly excited, I say I know how hard it is in such cases, to refrain from offering them those consolations, which are drawn from the hope, that their departed friend has entered into his eternal rest, when you can see no scriptural ground for such a hope. But severe as the trial must be to you and to them, how much better to endure and to inflict the pain, than to "go beyond the word of the Lord to say less or more." While on the one hand it would, in all ordinary cases, be cruel to aggravate their afflictions, by telling that in your opinion there is no hope, it would be wrong on the other to hold up en