Early graves, a book for the bereaved

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Preface

One among a number of Jewish traditions asserts, that in the Temple of Jerusalem there was a Gate open only to Mourners.

It is so with the present Volume. If I may except, so far, the concluding portions, it is designed alone for the Bereaved. Written words are often acceptable and soothing when any other intrusion is forbidden on the sacredness of sorrow.

Let it be stated at the outset, that, for the contents of this Manual, saving the few fragmentary Verse-quotations in the opening chapter, the Writer is alone responsible. In other words, it is not a compilation for which he is indebted to others. It would, however, have been impossible for him to sit down to its composition had it demanded, from first to last, original, or rather unpublished matter. For so long sustained a minor strain he would have been quite unequal. While,

PREFACE.

Om smong a numlwp of Jewiah traditions asaerto, that m the Temple of Jeniaalem there was a Gate open only to Monmers.

tnay except, ed alone for eptable and den on the

he contents Verao-qnoer is alone compilation Id, however, I its compooriginal, or aoEitained a aaX. While, viii PREFACE.

therefore, containiDg, and that to a considerable extent, entirely fresh material, — specially at the beginning and the close, — he felt, and feels it far better to fall back in other parts on selections from former writings, or rather portions of them, which were at the time addressed to those early bereaved. Such occasions occur in the course of every ministry: specially with any who can in thought re-traverse the better part of half a century. Many a " stijl small voice " is embraced in such a retrospect, with frequent sad,— often overwhelming associations. In most cases, if not in every one, these extracts are curtailed or expanded, — some very materially so, — and all are otherwise adapted to suit the requirements of the volume. This applies to the poetical portions, as well as to the prose.^

^ Among the writer's prose works from which selections have been made are — " Memories of Bethany" " Gevmeaaret" " Olivet" and " PcUmo8,*' " The Prophet of Fire," " SunaeU on the Hebrew Mountains" *' The Shepherd and His FUch," ''Palms of Mim," " Grapes of Eshcd" " Cimf<yrt Ye," " The First Bereavement,'' "Noontide at Sychar," " In Christo," &c. From the author's Poetry and Hymns, extracts have been taken from "Altar-Stones," " Gates of Praise," " Curfew Chimes" " Wdls of Baca," " The Anchor and the Haven."

It may be well farther to state, that there has been no attempt to link the intermediate meditations together by any train of consecutive thought : Each is independent of what precedes or follows. On this account (and indeed unavoidable from the nature of the theme) there may be an occasional recurrence of similar ideas or reflections. But, reading for profit, not for criticism, this will be readily understood and condoned by those for whom the volume is written.

PREFACE. ix

The terms ' Early Deaths ' and ' Early Graves ' are relative ones ; and, as will be seen in the sequel, the writer has by no means confined himself to their more literal and restricted meaning. While throughout, and particularly in the former portion of the book, Infancy, Childhood, and Early Youth claim and receive the chiefest and tenderest consideration; — it has been deemed well to pass, by a natural gradation, to the case of those of more advanced age, yet on whom the appellation may be bestowed with equally touching truth and reality. Indeed, ' Early Death ' has often its most touching illustration in regard to those who have been arrested in the fiilfilment of some great Life Mission, for the good of man and for the glory of God ; and such, as will be seen from the Table of Contents, occupy the latter pages. One of these Memorials briefly records the more salient features in the life and early departure of a devoted Missionary called away in the prime of early manhood ; while the last of these Immortelles is reverently laid on the grave of the heroic Captain Gill, who, in the writer's cherished remembrance, will be ever young ; and who perished, too early for his country, so tragically in the Sinai Desert.

* * I have gratefully to acknowledge the courtesy of the Dean of Lichfield in connection with the beau-

PREFACE, tiful Frontispiece to this volume ; — ^an autotype taken from the celebrated monument of Chantrey which adorns his Cathedral : — ^truly a Poem — ^rather, a touching Elegy in " breathing marble/'

Contents

PADS INTRODrCTORY CHAPTER . ..... I

A GENERAL HOHILY ON EARLY GRAVES . . 23

Part I. ILLUSTRATIVE BIBLE CASES

I. THE DEATH OF A CHILD . 40

II. THE DEAfH OF AN ONLY SON 60

IIT. THE EARLY DEATH OF AN ONLY DAUGHTER ... 78

IV. THE GRAVE OF AN ONLY BROTHER 102

V. THE EARLY GRAVE OF A KING 112

.part M.

GENERAL THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS.

I. A FIRST EARLY GRAVE 1 39

II. SECOND CAUSES 150

III. ASLEEP IN JESUS 160

IV. DEEP DEALINGS AND SI LFNT TRUST . . . . I72 xii CONTESTS,

T. THE CLAIM OF IHE DirDTK FAUCST A2a> TKK fc»Ain«»

iXTEEsias 17S

IX, J€nrFUL SEuxioxs 21S

XL I^ITISE TEASS OVER AS EARLT GRATB» AKD THE SLEEP

OF THE DEAD 244

XIL THE POWZB OF GOD 25S

XIIL THE ELESSEDEESS OF THE HOLT DEAD .... 270

^art iBL

ILLUSTRATIVE CASES KNOWN TO THE WRITER.

I, A DOMESTIC 8EBTANT — ^HAHKAH BEOOMFIELD 2S4

IL A MISSIOEART^BET. CHARLES ALBERT JAKSON 320

fIL A lk>LDIXll— CAFTAIK W. J, QTLL, B.K . . . . 362

INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTEE.

HAVE often purposed, as I have been often asked, to publish such a book as this. The purpose and the request, long entertained, I resolved recently to carry out, upon one of those occasions in which the words of the title possessed a sad and exceptional significance. Ifc was in connection with a bereft household in which the writer, as former pastor and friend, had a sacred interest, and where the touching monotone claimed a still more mournful appropriateness than in the case of the stricken Patriarch who first uttered it : — " Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin alsol" (Gen. xliL 36).

** Through dark and death, through fire and frosty With empty arms and treasure lost,

I knock and cry, Undone ! Undone I Is there no help, no comfort — ^none ? No gleaning in the wide wheat- plains "Where others drive their loaded wains ? " 1

** Oh, eyes that for my children's sake. Have poured forth tears like summer rain I Oh, breaking heart, that will not break, Yet never can be whole again I "

* E. Barrett Browning.

Ko mission or employment can be more sacred than the endeavour to speak balm- words of comfort to those overtaken and prostrated with similar bereavements ; yes, and for whom it may well be added, there exist pre-eminent solaces and consolations. Touching in their very tenderness, and slow to heal as such wounds are, the smitten heart, if unable to subscribe to the saying of Lord Bacon, " Believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis" can understand the truth of another observation in the case especially of dear departed children, " The lamentation for an innocent child is a {hornless sorrow^ ^ No unmeaning words, surely, in the lips of one who could thus pour forth the pathetic dirges of his grief : —

'' Despair was in our last farewell,

As closed thine eye ; Tears of our anguish may not tell

When thou didst die f Words may not paint our grief for thee ; Sighs are but bubbles on the sea Of our unfathomed agony."

I cannot do better, in extending these preliminary remarks, than bring together some additional " cardipJionia " in the shape of strains wafted from harps that have been hung on the willows above * early tombstones ; ' but which have been taken down to sing the Lord's song — " Songs in the night." These

^ Quoted in Mr. Logan's "Words of Comfort,'* p. 398, in a letter from D. M. Moir ('* Delta ").

minstrels of sorrow may be left to tell, first, the nature and characteristics of the afflictions that are more exclusively to engage our thoughts in the pages which follow, and then their exceptional solaces. If we begin with the shadow, it is only to give strength and brightness to the sunshine.

The First characteristic which impresses us in connection with early bereavement is its universality. Few are the British households indeed, home or colonial, in busy city or quiet village or lone mountain glen, to which the word " an early grave " does not bring a rush of one or more sacred memories, with the sense of an irreparable loss. Nothing can better express the feeling than the familiar stanzas of Longfellow, with their chords of simple, but, to use his own words in another connection, " exquisite music," for they touch the deepest sensibilities of our common nature : —

'* There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead Iamb is there ; There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended. But has one vacant chair !

The air is full of farewells to the dying

And mournings for the dead ; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,

Will not be comforted^"

I pass on to a Second characteristic, although one shared in common with all bereavements. There is perhaps no sadder element, no sadder thought and

INTRODUCTORY.

reflection, than alas ! tlie too obvious one — so obvious it seems a platitude to state it or enlarge upon it — that the fondly familiar face and voice and footstep will never again be heard and recognised. " He shall not return to me ! " wails out the monarch of Israel over his withered flower.

** Their voice, their toach, their sniile. Those love-springs flowing o*er.

Earth for its little while Shall never know them more.'* ^

*' To know that prayers and time and pains. Can the lost love no more regain ; Than bid the hours of dying day Gleam in their midnight noon again.'

n

Every anniversary, formerly associated with life and joy, now seems to toll anew the funeral-bell, and to summon the mourner to visit with fresh tears the sepulchre of buried hopes. We stand in the dark empty halls of grief where life's newly-lighted tapers have already burnt to their socket, and the poet's cry rings in vain along the deserted corridors : —

** Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still ! "

The same thought is thus touchingly expanded and vivified : —

" She will not view those upland fields snow-shrouded, Nor mark the fair frost-tracery on the pane ;

1 Rev. E. n. Bickemteth.

Nor watch the sky by winter gloom o'erclouded, Nor see the Christmas stars shine out again.

She will not listen to the church-bells ringing From the old tower their Christmas greeting sweet ;

Nor hear the clear child-voices blithely singing Their ancient carols through the village street.'* ^

To the same effect we may listen to the tearful lines of another, over a missing " angel-child " : —

" Twas as if some little song-bird

Had dropped down from yon blue dome,

Warbling still among the others, Wandering with them where they roam,

And yet hallowing remembrance With low gushes about home I

Shall we never hear her knocking

At the little ivied door T Will she never run to kiss us,

Bounding o*er the oaken floor ?

Has that music gone for ever ?

Are those tender lispings o'er ?

Oh, the terror I Oh, the anguish,

Of that one word — Evermore 1 *' •

Yet at times — and in this also poetry only too truly interprets the experience of mourners — there would seem to come to them something like a strange reawaking from the wild disquieting dream. In their unavailing -musings they are led to ask. Can it indeed be, after all, a sadj stern, irrevocable, irreversible reality? May it not prove but a fitful illusion and fantasy, which the morrow will dispel ?

INTRODUCTORY.

" The dark clouds part and the heavens are blue, And the trembling stare are shining through :

But the vision faded, and all was still On the purple valley and distant hill ; No sound was there save the wailing breeze, The rain, and the rustling cypress trees ! " ^

Tli'is last quotation yet further suggests, what most have vividly felt in their hour of bereavement and in their heart of hearts, — never so much as when the early hopes of childhood or youth-promise have perished from their view, — how, by reason of that one irreparable stroke, all around them is changed ? Even beautiful Nature, that once delighted eye and soul, seems to have undergone a blight. Its brightest rainbow-hues have become pale and ashen ; — in accordance with a true touch in the true poetry of grief I heard, long ago, from the lips of an aged cottager suddenly bereft of her only stay, as she described the sky no longer blue, the grass no longer green, the sun no longer gold. It was the same thought which, about the same time, had been translated for her by more than one poet. Let us hear the Poet-Laureate from his matchless dirge over departed worth : —

** With weary steps I loiter on,

Though always under altered skies ; The purple from the distance dies.

My prospect and horizon gone.

^ A. A. Proctor, '* Legends and Lyrics.'*

Day, when my crowned estate begun To pine in that reverse of doom, Which sickened every living bloom,

And blurred the splendour of the sun." ^

'' The sun was lazy in the heavens that day our darling died, And longer wore away the night we missed him from our side.

I uttered brave and soothing words, as was my manhood's part, Then hurried speechlessly away to hide the father's heart.

There was no loveliness in flowers, in human looks or books ; Dear household faces flitted round with pained and ghastly

looks; A shadow mufiled like a cloud the splendours of the day. And sorrow speaking to the night took all its stars away." '

" The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, All to the wallflower and wild-pea. Are changed : we saw the world through thee." •

" Farewell, beloved child ! " are the words of a well-known writer. " The bright eternal doors have closed after thee ; we shall see thy sweet face no more. Oh, woe for them that watched thy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold grey sky of daily life, and thou gone for ever ! "

" But she left us — she our angel —

Without murmuring, without moan.

And we woke and found it starlight — Found that we were all alone,

And as desolate as birds' -nests When the fledglings all have flown I " *

^ " In Memoriam. " 2 James Hedderwick. Quoted in " Words of Comfort," p. 41S. 8 D. M. Moir. * J. S. Bigg.

Shall we add to this a kindred feeling and sensation — the every where and the evert/ season when these lost treasures of aching souls are missed ? One of the bestknown and deservedly loved of our Christian minstrels thus tells his experience : —

'' The flowers of spriDg have come and gone ;

Bright were their blossoms, brief their stay ; They shone and they were shone npon.

They flourished, faded, passed away. So, hidden from our sorrowing eyes. Our young, sweet, spring-bloom buried lies ; One blast of earth swept o*er the flower. It died — the blossom of an hour.

The summer flowers are freshly blowing

Beneath glad July's genial mom ; Like smiles the face of earth bestrewing;

For fragrance and for beauty bom ; My summer flower has passed away, Tis now a blank where all was gay — A blank where, at each evening's close, I hoped to watch my budding rose.

Boon autumn with overflowing measure

Will hang upon each bending tree The clusters of its golden treasure.

The life of earth's vast family ; Alas I in one disastrous hour, From my green vine has fallen the flower ; A blighted hue its branches wear, My autumn tree looks cold and bare." ^

^ Dr. Horatius Bonar.

INTRODUCTORY.

**1 missed them in the budding days of spring, I missed them when I saw the ripe fruits fall ; But when the Christmas chimes began to ring, I missed them most of all !

Without, I heard the Christmas carols sung,

Within, I only saw those vacant chairs ; Ah me ! I shivered in my woe, and wrung My wild hands unawares 1 " ^

But enough has been said on the sad features and characteristics of such sorrows; — the tender shadows of earth's shadowed homes. " Deep is calling unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts : all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over me." " Yet the Lord will command His loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall he with 7ne " (Ps. xlii. 8).

Not all remains a tangled mystery, A blurred and blotted page of hieroglyphs, Unread and uninterpreted. Go, hush, Mourner, these plaintive wailings ; gather round His gracious Founts of Comfort. Leave the clouds That mope and lower upon the mountain heights ; And, in the valley, whither by His hand Thou hast been led, repair from pool to pooL Faith and Submission are bright angels, sent, With golden pitchers, to assist in fetching Up from the depths the promised solaces ; — With joy draw water from those Wells of Life I

Using another figure : Come with me, bereaved

1 *• Psahns of Life,"— "The ChOdren's Angels."

TO INTRODUCTORY.

Parents and friends, and let us note together a few of the true immortelles which are laid on the gi*ave of your loved and lost.

The First soothing and consoling reflection (I speak again more specially of the loss of little children), is the " thomless " characteristic which the poet already quoted refers to. Your child is safe ; — as safe as everlasting power and love can make it.

** But oh, the thought he is iu lieaven, —

That thought is bliss 1 "

" My angel child ! " writes the Baroness Bunsen as she stoops over her beloved dead, " After life's fitful fever she sleeps well. . . . That fine intelligence, that expansive heart and soul are taking in full draughts of the blessedness that shall know no end." ^

We never can forget, long years ago, with what deep emotion a bereaved father read to us these lines, from a poet whose power and pathos are not appreciated as they deserve : —

'* Death found strange beauty on tliat polished brow And dashed it out. There was a tint of rose On cheek and lip. He touched the veins with ice, And the rose faded.

^ " Those wurds of the Apocalypse, * These are they in whose mouth >va8 found no guile, for they are without spot before the throne of God,' were chosen by my husband for the inscription on the cippus placed over the remains of the two children we were called upon to deposit near the Pyramid of Caius Cestius." — Baroness BunserCs Life and LettevSf voL ii. p. 271.

INTRODUCTORY, ii

Forth from those hlue cyea There spake a wistful tenderness ; a doubt Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence Alone may wear. With ruthless haste he bound The silken fringes of those curtaining lids For ever.

But there beamed one smile.

So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow, Death gazed, and left it there. He dared not steal The signet-ring of heaven." ^

One " greatly beloved," who has long since joined the services of the Upper Sanctuary, unburdens, in these simple strains, the sorrows of a brother's heart to a parent on the death of a young and only daughter : —

** She is in Heaven ! — that thought alone Should chase the grief which clouds thy brow: Hers the glad summons from the Throne — * My Glory enter thou.'

She is in Heaven I — lest earthly love. So sweet, so strong as hers and thine, To both might too attractive prove. Displacing Love Divine.

She is in Heaven ! — ^but still imseen With hers thy notes of praise may blend ; On the same Rock thy soul may lean. To the same Centre tend.

She is in Heaven ! — a gleaming star. To cheer thee in thy darkened lot.

And guide 'mid joys which fleeting are. To One who changeth not

* L. H. Sigoumey.

She is in Heaven ! —at times, when prone

To mourn the race so early run,

A white-robed saint before the Throne

Whispers — * The prize is won/

She is in Heaven ! — ^has reached ere noon

In safety yon celestial shore ;

And oh ! the bliss to meet her soon —

' Not lost, but gone before.* '* ^

As familiar to all bereaved parents as those already quoted, are Longfellow's lines on " The Eeaper and his Sickle ; " but their repetition can never pall : —

" He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, He kissed their drooping leaves ; It was for the Lord of Paradise He bound them in his sheaves.

And the mother gave in tears and pain

The flowers she most did love, She knew she should find them all again

In the fields of light abo?e.

Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath

The Reaper came that day ; 'Twas an angel visited the green earth

And took the flowers away."

The mother " knew she would find them all again." Yes, find them exactly as transplanted. Not blown into the unrecognised rose, but still the tender bud with which she parted in life's young morning. Not the tree grown out of her earthly remembrance in matured branch and foliage, but the 8ame tender

sapling that was nursed by her side in the earthly

garden, with an unchanged identity. A poet's beautiful

sentiment on this, is worthy, at all events of being

fondly entertained and clung to, viz., that while here

below, children lose their often " angelic " lovableness

and attractiveness as they grow up to manhood and

womanhood — called to grapple with the stern realities

of life; not so with the early dead, — "lilies gathered"

with the early dews of morning on their snowy

petals : —

" fiow the children leave us ! and no traces Linger of that smiling angel-band; Gone, for ever gone ! and in their places Weary men and anxious women stand.

Yet we have some little ones still ours ;

They have kept the baby-smile we know, Which we kissed one day, and hid with flowers.

On their dead white faces, long ago." 1

On reading some time since the published " Letters of Charles Dickens," I was struck with the following. That distinguished author, whose keen and discerning sympathies were in keeping with his genius, had ever a peculiar reticence in the obtrusion of his own personal religious views and opinions. But when he does speak, it is always with singular beauty, reality, earnestness, and pathos. He thus addresses a bereaved parent on the death of a child : — " The simplest and

* A. A. Proctor's " Legends and Lyrics."

most afifecting passage in all the noble history of our Great Master is His consideration for little children ; and in reference to yours, as many millions of bereaved mothers, poor and rich, will do in reference to theirs until the end of time, you may take the comfort of the generous words. In a book by one of the greatest English writers, called * A Journey from this World to the Next,' a parent comes to the distant country beyond the grave, and finds the little girl he had lost so long ago, engaged in building a bower to receive him in, when his aged steps should bring him there at last. He is filled with joy to see her, so young, so bright, so full of promise, and is enraptured to think that she never was old, wan, tearful, withered. This is always one of the sources of consolation in the deaths of children. With no effort of the fancy, with nothing to undo, you will always be able to think of the pretty creature you have lost as a child in heaven." ^

God has His own all-wise, it may be mysterious, reasons for these early removals. As early plucked and gathered flowers, they were required as exotics for their place in the better garden. A mother has her favourite child in the earthly family ; may not what has been called "the mother-love of God" have the same in His ? — reason sufficient for taking His favourites to what you may call an early grave ; what ITe calls an early Home !

* "Letters of Charles Dickens," pp. 170, 171.

" We call them ours, o'erwept with selfish tears,

Overwatched with restless longings iiight and day, Forgetful of the high, mysterious right He holds to bear our cherished plants away.

But when some sunny spot in those bri^;ht fields Needs the fair presence of an added flower,

Down sweeps a starry angel in the night.

At mom the rose has vanished from our bower." ^

Of this, at all events, we may feel assured — a thought dwelt upon and expanded in more than one future page — that many trials and sorrows and sins have thereby been mercifully escaped. " The transplanted flowers " have evaded " the windy storm and tempest." Their blossoms can no longer be ruffled with the blast, their leaves no longer blighted and mildewed.

" Why therefore weep, when all the cares, The doubts, the troubles, and the snares. The threatening clouds, the falling tears, Boyhood's wild hopes and manhood's fears, That might have been for him — for thee — Have passed away, and ne'er shall be ?

No thorns of earth have pierced his feet. No bitter tempests round him beat ; He scarcely suflfered, then was crowned, Was scarcely lost till he was found, A child of thine — a child of bliss ! Why therefore weep for joy like this ? " ■

" For them the wild is past With all its toil and care.

Its dry sirocco blast, Its fiery noonday glare.

1 H. B. Stowe. « Rev. Dr. Monsell's "Parish Musings."

i6 INTRODUCTORY.

Them the Good Shepherd leads

Where storms are never rife, In tranquil dewy meads

Beside the Fount of Life." ^

Oh, how often, if the muffled sobs or passionate grief of earth could only be stilled, would another and very different sound break on the ear of faith ! —

'* I heard the angels singing

As they went up through the sky, With a tender spirit bringing To its Father's house on high.

Happy thou, so soon ascended.

With thy shining raiment on!

Happy thou, whose race is ended

With a crown so quickly won 1

Happy thou, so timely gathered

From a region cold and bare, There to bloom, a flower unwithered.

Through an endless summer there ! " '

At the funeral of the late great and good Archbishop of Canterbury, all who, like the writer, had the privilege of being present, must retain an evervivid recollection of the moment when the words and cadences of lines so beautiful in themselves, and so touchingly associated with the departed Primate's early sorrows, were wafted from the inner circle of mourners. They had been treasured by him and his in life ; now

1 Rev. E. H Bickersteth. ^ Rev. J. D. Bums.

they formed the most impressive part of his own last requiem : —

" And with the mom those angel faces smile, Which we have loved long since and lost awhile.**

We have made the same calming, blissful assurance the motto and keynote of this volume. Oh, ye sorrowing, broken-hearted mourners I let the everlasting smile of these angel faces support you amid "encircling gloom," and reconcile to the traversing of "moor and fen, crag and torrent, till the night is gone ! " Lift up your drooping heads. It may be night here; but there is no night there! You will meet them all again, their eyes beaming in the morning light of immortality !

No dark shadow of doubt or anxiety looms over the future of your loved ones. This, believe me, is often a sad element in the grief of others, — indeed, the sorrow of all sorrows. What would hundreds of bleeding hearts give for the brief word of consolation which trembles on your lips through fast-falling tears ?