The Morristown gazette. [volume] (Morristown, Tenn.) 1867-1920, 1882-01-18
rs DEATH DREADFUL /?
A FUNERAL ADDRESS BY ROBERT @. IN
GERsOLL-AT THE FUNERAL OF
LITTLE CHILD.

GERsOLL-AT THE FUNERAL OF
LITTLE CHILD.
At the funeral of a little son Of
George o. Miller, detective and an
active politician of Washington city
Bob Ingersoll oficiated. There was
no service at the house. The coffin
was taken to the Congressional
Cemetery, where Col. Ingersoll
joined the funeral party. He made
a brief address when the coffin had
been lowered into the grave, reiter-
atins his doctrine that if there was
Supreme Creator he had not made
men to be damned. The following
Is the full text of his Grafton, which
is touchingly beautiful:
"My friends: I know how vain it
is to gid a grief with words, and
yet wish to take from every grave
its fear Here in this world, where
life and death are equal kings, all
should be brave enough to meet
what all the dead have met. The
future has been filled with fear,
stained and polluted by the heart
less past. From the wondrous tree
Of life the buds and blossoms fall
with ripened fruit, and in the COM
mon bed of earth patriarchs and
babes sleep side by side.
"Why should we fear that which
will come to all that is? We cannot
tell, we do not know, which is the
greater blessing-life or death. We
cannot say that death is not a good.
We do not know whether the grave
is the end of this life or the door of
another, or whether the night here
is not somewhere else a dawn.
Neither can we tell which is the
moro fortunate-the child dying in
its mothers arms before its lips
have learned to form a word, or he
who journeys all the length of lifes
uneven road, painfully taking the
last slow steps with staff and crutch.
Every cradle asks us, "whence?"
and every coffin, ''whither?" The
poor barbarian, weeping above his
dead, can answer these questions as
intelligently and satisfactorily as the
robed priest of the most authentic
creed. The fearful ignorance of the
one is just as consoling as the learn
ed and unmeaning words Of the
other.
"No man, standing where the
horizon of a life has touched a grave,
has any right to prophesy future
filled with pain and tears. 1t may
be that death gives all there is of
worth to life. If those we press and
strain against our hearts could new
er die, perhaps that love would
wither from the earth. May be this
common fate treads from out the
paths between our hearts the weeds
of selfshness and hate; and l had
rather live and love where death is
King than have eternal life where
love is not Another life is naught,
unless we know and love again the
ones who love us here:
"They who stand with breaking
hearts around this little grave need
have no fear. The larger and the
nobler faith in all that is, and is to
be, tells US that death, even at its
worst, is only perfect rest. We
know that, through the common
wants of life-the needs and dutics
of each hour-their grief will lessen
day by day, until at last this grave
will be to them place of rest and
peace almost of joy. There is tor
them this consolation: The dead do
not suffer. If they live again, their
lives will surely be as good as ours.
eve have no fear. We are all
children of the same mother, and
the same fate awaits us all. We,
too, have our religion, and it is this:
Help for the living, hope for the
dead"