A General Homily on Early Graves
-M-EVEN FATHEB: FOR SO IT SEEMED GOOD IN THT 8IQHT.
MATT. XL 26.
“even 80, FATHER: FOR SO IT SEEMED GOOD IN THY SIGHT.”
MATT. Xi. 26.
‘“”^r^ HEAED these words uttered but the other day, under aflfecting circumstances, at a young Christian’s deathbed.^
Pulpit themes should take their hue and colour, if possible, from events and impressions of the hour. I have accordingly thought it might not be unprofitable to select this beautiful saying as suggestive of a few appropriate meditations. I separate it from its connection in the passage where it occurs. I shall not even regard the verse, in what is its highest and holiest meaning, as an utterance of the Saviour; but look at it as it stands, the simple expression of devout submission to the mysterious decrees of God on the part of all His true people.
The words necessarily, and on the face of them, imply that in this world of ours there are deep perplexities; on human data insoluble problems: that things do not appear “good” in our sight: that if we
The writer has deemed it better to retain this exactly as it was spoken from the pulpit: — the themes and reflections suggested by the early death of a peculiarly lovable young member of his congregation.
had the world in our own hands we should order events far otherwise: our own lot and that of others we should mould far differently. But all that concerns us is happily in other and better keeping. Falling back on the Fatherhood of the Great Supreme, in the only true sense of that paternal relation, it is for us to say, humbly and devoutly, accepting the mysteries we cannot explain — “Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in Thy sight!”
These perplexities and problems are manifold. The long, pining, wasting sickness; and especially, as is often seen, arresting the active and the good in the midst of careers of usefulness and beneficence; health and strength that can ill be spared; days of suffering and nights of weariness appointed: that never seems “good” in our sight.
Take another case, that of worldly impoverishment; the loss of a man’s substance, — not a niggard, not a penurious hoarder, but a generous giver; one alike with a full purse and an open one, whose delight was to relieve distress, and discharge liberally the responsible stewardship of his wealth to the Great Giver. How strangely mysterious to see the cringing worshipper of Mammon permitted, unhindered and unimpeded to pile up the golden heap, while this noble-hearted almoner of Jehovah’s bounty is crippled with disastrous loss — pecuniary embarrassment, for which, too, perchance he is not personally responsible — the innocent victim, it may be, of cruel wrong and heartless deception. That cannot seem “good” in our sight!
But I shall confine myself now to the one illustration which comes home to many, very many amongst us, and to some with exceptional impressiveness — the death of the young and promising. I do not refer to those who were so intellectually alon, but to not a few who, in addition to mere natural acquirements, had given evidence of better spiritual gifts, and felt within their youthful bosoms the throbbings and aspirations of the higher nature. How often do lives of greatest lovableness — the pride of the household — appear to be the first taken — the choicest blossoms the first prematurely to fall! Is this a mere illusion, a natural and pardonable fantasy? It may at times be purely sentimental. The bereft heart, like the shepherd of the parable, may at times be blamable in forgetting the ninety and nine, and going in longing parental fondness and partiality after “that which was lost.” Yet, explain it as we may, neither can what is a very generally accepted article in the creed of the bereaved be relegated to this domain of mere sentiment. It too often really is the favourite child, or the youth of fairest promise, that is the missing one; one of those whose names are described by a pathetic writer as “always on gravestones; and their sweet smiles, their heavenly eyes, their singular words and ways among the buried treasures of yearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not!” It was an old saying, even of Pagan antiquity, “Those whom the gods love die young.” No lines of Wordsworth’s are more familiar than these: —
Oh, sir, the good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer’s dust Bum to the socket*’
Many a parent’s heart can respond to the tender words of a touching Eastern lament: —
“I never nursed a dear gazelle.
To glad me with its soft black eye.
But when it learnt to know me well
And love me, it was sure to die.”
Be this, however, as it may, there are few, at all events, who will not allow that among the most mysterious of Providences is the mystery of early death. When we think of the possible future of our dear departed had they been spared — their possible, their probable usefulness in the Church and in the world, we cannot see ’ good ’ in their removal. There is little to perplex in the case of the aged Christian’s translation; for with him the battle is fought and life’s mission fulfilled. But the young warrior, full of elastic hope and bright anticipations, suddenly to fall ere he has had time to buckle on his armour: the young, it may be the boyish soul, filled with noble yearnings
1 Mrs. H. B. Stowe.
2Z A GESERAL HOMILY OS EARLY GRAVES,
to make the worM the Letter for hiai while he lired, and to miss him when he died! In vain, in the presence of the King of Terrors, as he lays his icy finger on the brow, do we ask, “Why is this?”
But “it seemed go-od in Thy sight!” There are reasons (shadowy, partial, undefined they may be); but there are such reasons for this apparently premature departure of the youthful Christian, which may lead us in calm faith and submission to breathe that ‘^ divinely taught utterance. Let me proceed, with God’s blessing, to specify one or two of these.
I. The y<m7vg Christian is thereby saved many unforeseen perils. We never like to think of ecil in connection with the juvenile, the innocent, the happy. And in the case of a life that has early consecrated itself to God, we can surround it only with sunshine — sunshine in the present, and with a halo of future hope and blessing. But who can tell, if this life of promise had been prolonged, what might have overtaken it? Who that knows the treachery of the human heart can forecast the coming years of the most loving and beloved? Life’s shores, alas! are strewed with the wrecks of many a vessel which began its course on the early river with all that a parent’s fond heart could desire! How many a father would have been grateful had his prodigal boy been summoned in youth, instead of being spared, not as a blessing, but as a curse! In the quaint oft-quoted words of an old writer.
Better David’s dead child than his living Absalom! “Better for the green and tender vine, even with its unripe or undeveloped clusters, to be transplanted, than left for “the boar of the wood to waste it and the wild beast of the field to devour it.” We cannot anticipate or foresee; but there is an omniscient Eye which can — which does! He may discern mercy and kindness in the early removal, unknown and undiscerned by us. “Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in Thy sight!”
II. The young Christian is often early taken away, because in his case the great end of existence is fidfilled. That end is not to be measured by days or months or years. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God.” That glorious consummation may be attained in ten years, or twenty years, as well as in fifty, or threescore and ten. The child may die “an hundred years old I” It is a promise of God given in one of the Psalms, “With long life will I satisfy him.” What is truly long life? Men may survive to the age of Methuselah, and yet the life of many centuries may be a blank. They may live all the while like the men of Meroz, “doing nothing,” and sink into their graves unremembered and forgotten; — the world no gainer by them during a barren and profitless existence, and no tear to spare for them at their departure. While a touly “long life” — the life which is measured and calculated not by arithmetic but by deeds — by virtue and worth, may be compressed within a few brief years. The world has its conventional time tox celebrating what is called coming of age; but in the sight of God that life attains its majority, when, within a far briefer period, the owner of it fan lay his head on a death-pillow, and in humble reverence say, in the spirit at least of the words of the Great Master, “I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” Even in the case of hum genius this is true. Raphael died in comparative youth, and yet, in the
earthly sense of the term, he is immortal. He compressed the lives of a thousand into a few brief years, and gave an impulse to art and to the creation of all that, pictorially at least, is devoutest and purest in religious sentiment, which is felt to this day. So, in a far higher acceptation, morally and spiritually, there are young lives, early taken, of those who, in the truest, grandest sense, have been the Methuselahs of the world; who lived briefly yet nobly here, whose existence is perpetuated in a more glorious sphere above. “He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him a long life, even for ever and ever.” “Even so. Father: for so it seevud good in Thy sight!”
But this suggests —
III. The young Christian is frequently summoned to an early grave, in order to draw survivors and friends
* Psalm xxi. 4, Prayer-Book version.
. t
. tQ heaven. He or she, the early removed, are often thus set a& beacon-lights on “the farther shore.” Many a heart tkat resists other influences, — sickness, worldly loss, and similar providential dispensations, has been von to God and heaven and happiness by the glorified voices of the departed! The sheep (to use a well-known simple illustration) which no force could drive into the fold, — which sternly resisted going through the wicket-gate, is induced to do so by the bleat of her own lamb. The lamb is taken first by the shepherd, and then the other follows with willing and obedient step.^
Since this sentence was written, the writer’s eye accidentally fell on the following verses; the expansion of the same thought in a much more beautiful and expressive form: —
After our child’s untroubled breath
Up to the Father took its way.
And on our home the shade of Death
Like a long twilight haunting lay,
And friends came round with ua to
weep
Her little spii-it’s swift remove,
The story of the Alpine sheep
Was told to la by one we love.
They, in the valley’s sheltering care,
Soon crop the meadow’s tender
prime,
And when the sod grows brown and
bate,
The shepherd strives to make them
climb
To airy shelves of pasture green.
That liang along the mouniain’s
side,
Where grass and flowers together
lean,
And doWn through mist the sunbeams slida
But naught can tempt the timid things
The steep and rugged paths to try.
Though sweet the shepherd calls and
sings.
And seared below the pastures lie.
Till in his arms their lambs he takes.
Along the dizzy verge to go;
Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks,
They follow on o’er rock and snow.
And in those xmstures, lifted fair.
More dewy-soft than lowland mead.
The shepherd drops his tender care.
And sheep and lambs together fred.
This parable, by Nature breathed,
Blew on me as the south-wind fi-ee
O’er frozen brooks that flow unsheathed
From icy thraldom to the sea.
A blissful vision through the night.
Would all my happy senses sway.
Of the Good Shepherd on the height.
Or climbing up the starry way,
Holding our little lamb asleep, —
While like the murmur of the sea,
Sounded that voice along the deep.
Saying, “Arise and follow me!”
M. W. Lowell.
Ah! how many who have now reached their thrones and their crowns can testify: “But for that sainted child early taken from me, I never would have been here! It was that voice which first stole down upon my ear in the soft whisper of celestial love, and made me first listen to the words of the sublime vision in the Book of Revelation, ‘Come up hither! ‘”
Several present, have sons who are abroad in a foreign land. What a new interest their going there has given you in that distant country! Kingdoms and colonies perhaps you scarce knew of previously, and which you could not have pointed to in the map, now how familiar! So with many a bereft parent. Tour child has emigrated, — set sail to the celestial shores. You have an interest in that unseen world you never had before. Heaven is brought near you with all the strength of a home feeling. It is no longer “the land that is very far off.” You cannot help, in thought, being drawn to those mansions from which the angel message is ever coming from a voice silent on earth: “If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice because I said I go unto the Father!”
Even so J Father: for so it seemed good in Thy sight T
Once more —
IV. The young Christian is removed; hut he is with you still. Though in one sense taken from your sight; in another and better sense he is not so. I speak not of heaven; I speak now of earth. Even in regard to this world he is not ‘’ ganej* The poet beautifully says —
Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.*’
Yes, far better; for love is an unquenchable thing. Nay, love, in the truest meaning of the term, is life; and that love never dies. If you think of it for a moment, it is not the mere bodily presence of a child, or brother, or sister, that is ’ life.’ If that child grow up to be the prodigal I spoke of a little ago, his life and his love are alike really cut oflf from his parent; whereas there is true life and love in those memories which cluster round the grave of the sainted dead. That son or brother we have also just referred to, who went to the distant colony or settlement, and who with a smile on his lip and the tear in his eye, gave us the last waive of his hand when the vessel was leaving the harbour, he is not dead.. Though separated from us, there is life and love still in that land of adoption. We think of him as living. It is our daydream to see him and welcome him again. On the other hand, that friend, that relative, though he may live next door, is virtually * dead,’ who by unkindness and ingratitude is estranged from us; passing and repassing in life’s thoroughfares without the nod of recognition. He may be liviTig in the literal sense of the word, but he is “dead while he liveth.” His personal presence is not life; he is truly” the dead one.*’
While the other, whose memories of holy affection are enshrined in the heart, who spake words of imperishable kindness and comfort in passing through the dark valley, and pointed, when the tongue was unable to speak, to the land and the ties which know no dissolution, he is truly the living one. The link in the one case is snapped; the other, though invisible, is a golden chain which binds and rivets, now and for all eternity/
“No longer here,” says Hawthorn, in the first hours of parental grief; “she is there; gazing, seeing, knowing, loving, as the blessed only see, and know, and love. Earth has one angel less, and heaven one more, since yesterday. Already, kneeling at the throne, she has received her welcome, and is resting on the bosom of her Saviour. If human love have power to penetrate the veil — (and hath it not?) — then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them!”
Let bereaved fathers and mothers ponder often this elevated and elevating truth. The casket has perished, but the jewel is still safe. Just as in that appalling railway catastrophe the other day, amid the charred ashes of death the brilliants and diamonds were found untouched and uninjured. Yes; I repeat it. That silent portrait on the wall is not* your child. That face in your photographic collection is not your child.
See Dr. Martineau’s ‘’Endeavours after the Christian Life,” pp. 1 19,
That white bust of marble which the chisel has wrought for you is not your child. These are dumb, mute, inanimate, — the mere semblances, no more; loved and treasured indeed as memorials and souvenirs. But it is a nobler living image and reality on which your heart can repose;, the example which was bequeathed to you, the loving thoughts and elevated motives, and the words and ways and deeds which death never can extinguish. The beautiful action of the Saviour of old may become, with another sacred meaning, an habitual one with you: “And He took a child and set him in the midst.” With such-like memories, and with so noble a reversion, may all sorrowing parents who have been called to mourn blanks in their households, lives of virtue and promise so apparently quenched in darkness, gather around the ‘early grave;’ and with these gleams of holy “radiance left lingering behind, breathe the word of devout and loving submission, “Uven sOy Father: for so it seemed good in Thy sight!”
“She is not dead — the child of our affection —
But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ Himself doth rule. In that great cloister’s stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution,
She lives whom we caU deadl”
Longfellow.
If I have a remark in dosing, it would be to the young — to those who are still spared in life and health and strength — that they might remember what Ufe is, and how sacred is its mission, whether the period of their natural existence be long or short Ye who are still in the morning of youth, try to know and to realise what a blessed thing early piety is. And if there be, now and then, those among your playmates and companions who love God and serve Him, that are cut down, may you have grace to take their places in the heavenly course. Those of you who are older may recall, that in the torchlight races of the ancient Greeks, when one young flambeau-bearer had finished his allotted part in the running, he handed on the lighted torch to another; this to another; and this to another still. Be it so with you in a higher, nobler race. When young torch-bearers we may be mourning to-day have finished their course and kept the faith, may their example animate you to follow their steps; — to take the torch from their dying hands, and bear it on till you reach, like them, your heavenly crowns. The mansions are filling, the cloud of young witnesses is increasing. “So run that ye may obtain!’’
EVEN SO.
my Father, even so I
Nought is stable earth can show;
Vanishing like wreaths of snow,
Or like transient snnset glow:
Sorrows will their shxidow throw;
Broken oft the early bow;
Early leaves the pathway strew,
Home-flowers blighted ere they blow;
Gourds lie withered ere they grow;
Sundown while yet morning-glow.
Friendships come and friendships go:
Billows tossing to and fro;
All at best a passing show.
But, amid the ebb and flow,
‘Tis enough for me to know
All that happens here below
Thou in love appointest so:
Green or ripe, Thy right to mow,
Heaping what Thy hand did sow.
Taking what Thou didst bestow,
Kaisiiig up and laying low, —
EVEN so I