The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-12-16 00:00:00

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

In Sunday afternoon Dean Stanley preached an eloquent
sermon on the life of his Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales, in presence of an immense congregation, in West
minister Abbey. The Dean chose for his text, Philippians,
chap. 1., v. 21—" To lire e Chrid, and to die ie liana." He
said

In a day like this, when there Is one topic in every house-
hold, one question on every lip. It is impossible to stand in
this place and not endeavour at least to give some expression
to that of which every heart Is full. By that natural Christian
Instinct, at which I glanced last Sunday, the whole nation is
gathered into one focus ; we all press, as it were, round one
darkened chamber; we all feel that with the mourning
family mother, wife, brothers, sisters—who are there aa-
aembled we are indeed one. The thrill of their (cursor hopes
passes through Alld through the differences of rank or
station. We feel that while they represent the whole people,
they also represent and are that which each family and each
member of each family in England is separately, in the
fierce battle between life and death, for the Issues of which
we are aU looking with such eager expectation. We
see the likeness of w-hat will certainly befall every individual
soul among us ' • and the reflections which this straggle with
all its manifold un,•ertainties suggests concem iis all alike.
Who is there that has not from time to time felt this as he
looks over the sufferings of his mortal life, as he thinks of
the weary nights and days of siekness, of the restlessness,
the sinking, the pain, the disquiet, the distress of the
watchers, the protracted agony of the bystanders—or yet
more as he looks abroad, still more widely, on the
miseries of this sinful world, the diasppointments of bright
hopes, the sore temptations to evil, the multiplied chances
of failure—who' as he thus thinks of himself or, others,
has not beers tempted, at least sometimes, to say, "0
that I had the wings of a dove, that I might
flee away and be at rest ?" That is the feeling, beautifully.
expressed by the greatest of our poets, Shakespeare. In his
famous Sonnet. So felt even the great Apostle when amid
the•desertion of friends and ale hard struggle of truth
against falsehood and of good against evil, he -desired to be
at rest and to be with his 'Master beyond the grave. To die,
AS he says, would be far better. So, too, we for ourselves
and for those we love, for those whose lives are fraught with
so many chances of good and evil -we may well long for
that day when we and they shall have "shuffled off this
mortal coil— when we shall have done once and forev,i with
the wearing anxiety, the paltry qnarrels, the baffled hope, the
grinding engineof thisgreat Babylon of earth—when we shall
have escaped from the burden and the heat of the day, from
the roar mid turmoil of the swollen torrent of life, to be with
the beloved departed. To be no longer vexed with the sight
ofsvil which we cannot control, to lie no longer striving
fruitlessly after good which we cannot attain, to be safe from
temptation, safe from care, to have passed into the presence
of just men made perfect—la this sense death is an•l nmst
be gain to all. And it is by reflecting on this gain, this clear
gain, that the mind can bow itsef before the Supreme Will,
and that the heart serves itself to the terrible thought of the
last dread sevennee from all that we see and know. It is
for this that, In thn langusae of our Visitation Service, we
conmiend the soul with such calm confidence into the
hands of its faithful Creator and its most merciful Saviour.
But the Apostle tells us that, after all, there is something
yet greater than the gain and the rest of death, and that is
the struggle and the victory of life. Death was gain to him,
but life was something more—it was no less than Christ. To
me, he says, to live is Christ. Death, in one sense, is the
gate of lite eternal but life, this immortal life, is the only
true gate of a happy and peaceful death. It is in life, in
the wear and tear of life, that those gracee are wrought
and fashioned which perfect the soul, Immortal after death.
Those linen of our great poet which I quoted just now, des-
cribing the weariness of the world, close with the one
thought which reconciled him to remain. "Tired of all
these," he says.—
" From these I would be gone,
" But that I feu to leave my Love alone."

Yee, doubtless, this Is one chief thought that Makes
earthly life dear to us—the thought that it contains those
whom our departure would leave alone and desolate. But,
in fact, this sense of human love, like all pure earthly affec-
tion, is but the likeness of a feeling for higher. When the
heathens of fld, when the unbelievers have sometimes
sought escape from the troubles of life by self tlestruction,
they have done to in order to escape from life, which to
them had no sacred feeling, but the Christian, the believer
is the goodness of GO4I and of Christ, has, or ought to have,
the abiding consciousness that in life there an not only,
It may be, the dearest objects of his earthly affection, but
that there are WO very work and the very presence of
Christ. Death may he great, but, toren practical purposes, life
Is greater still. Death may become a state te be desired for our.
selvesand titre roll deed in for others; but life —life Is the state
in which Christ makes Himself known to us, and during which
we toast make ourselves known to Him. He sanctifies and
gilds every stage slit. He was a little child, and showed us
how lit it was to be obedient to parents—how dear to a
mother a child could be—how he never forgot her, but even
on the cross thought of what would sooth and comfort her.
He grew up to boyhood—he showed us how to learn both by
hearing and by asking I jueetiong-- how early he could be
busied in doing his Father's Ousinees. He showed us in full
manhood how, in the midst of the world, and of constant,
pressing duties which, coming and going, In feasting and in
company no less than in serious moments. Ile still was the
game divine Master and friend. Ile showed alit, the desola-
tion and solitude of Gethsemane and Calvary, when he
seemed tube left, unsupported, to Himself, that Ile was yet
not alone because the father was with this.

(iod la not the God of the dead but of the living. Christ
is not a I lead Christ but • living Christ. The living, Ile that!
praise Thee—he shall servo Thee. There may he every-
where—l quote the words of a devoted Christian of another
country—" There may be a silent apostleship, a persuasive
and Incessant sermon—namely, the uniform brightness of a
profound and true contentment. Never can the immortal
hopes to which our devotion renders its sacrifice be no well
proclaimed by our words as they can be by the radiant tran-
quility of that Inward repose which °ernes up from the heart
Into the countenance." " I find," says the same saint-like
person, "I find death perfectly desirable, and I find life
perfectly beautiful." Anil what is true of the life of indi-
viduals is true also of the life of great conununities. There is,
Indeed, both for individuals and fur nationaa life which is not•
life—empty, dead, barren, a mere existence—vanity of vani-
ties. list the cullectivadife of thousands of English Christian
souls, the life of the heart of a great people lathe true
element, the living element in which the spirit of man
lives and makes others live, of which the spirit of
Christ, which is Christ Himself, Is the life and light.
Aud now, 0 my brethren, if there he an individual
life to which much that I have already said is applicable
—if there be a life dear to hundreds of loving
friends, dear to a most loving family —a life which
in their services and affections finds its best inspirations
and its bed vitality—a life which had till now, humanly
@peaking, long years of usefulness and happiness in the re-
mote future -then, for the preservation of that life, for the
sake of him who now lies on the dark confines of fear and
of hope, and for the lake of those most near and
most dear to him, we may and must earnestly pray and
trust that it may by God's mercy be preserved. And when
we add that this is a life which may illfilionee to an untold
degree that larger national and Christian life of which I
have Just new spoken—a life which, if duly appreciated and
fitly used, contains within it future and far distant
opportunities of geed, such aa no other single exist-
ence in this great conimunity possesses—a life uhich
may stimulate to an Incalculable degree all that is noble and
beneficient among us, and which may in like manner dis-
courage all that is low, and base and frivolous—a life which
may moderate the extremes of party seal as nothing else
can, and lead it to pursue as nothing else can pursue with
undivided energy the common weal of all—a life which, if
spared may be the means of making us all more and more
to he of one heart and soul in all that is great and good,
even as at thin moment the fear of Willa, it has brought us
all together now with one heart and soul. Ruch a life is
worth living—such a life is worth praying for ; and for such
a life—for such a Royal life, which is so precious now to
those who are watching its fluctuations from hour to hour
beside or around the bed of sickness—which may be no in-
estimably prod.'s for our children and our children's chil-
dren, we pray that It may yet be prolonged for the good of
man and the glory of God, in and through Jesus Christ our
Redeemer, who is the Resurrection and the Life, in whom
whosoever belleveth has passed from death to life. Amen.