STRAY THOUGHTS ON MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS.

BELIEVING in the resurrection of the Body, and in the life of the world to come, it is not a matter of utter indifference to the Christian, that the humbler companion of his soul, without which the bliss of that soul will not be finally perfect, should rest in peace until the great day, when the Lord Himself shall come to raise the dead. A reverential care of churchyards is soothing to our feelings, as we know ourselves to be mortal; and is congenial, in the pious minds of Christians, with their sacred recollections of that “new tomb” in a garden, wherein, for a brief season, our Saviour was Himself laid. The old yew trees of our quiet country churchyards, or the avenues of beech or lime trees leading from the gate to the porch, the flowers near the graves, the well kept grass, all testify to the care bestowed on the last resting-places of our dead; for the yew trees have seen generation after generation pass away, and remind us that it is not only in our day that such reverent care has been manifested. Nor is it otherwise than very important that the memorials of the dead should speak to the living. Every tombstone should remind us of “ Jesus and the resurrection.” This was the great topic of Apostolic preaching; and if the inscriptions on tombstones would point the passer-by to the one hope of the sinner, they would indeed preach to him solemnly, and, by the grace of God, effectually. Nor can this object be better attained than by the use of well selected texts ; for in the solemn presence of death man's words should be as few as possible, God's words are best.

Alas! the inscriptions on many monuments only display the worldliness and pride of surviving friends, and give us no comforting hope concerning the departed. For instance, with some pleasing exceptions, the epitaphs composed in the last century are of a very unsatisfactory character. They are often heartless, trivial, and thoroughly unchristian in their tone. They speak of the virtues of the deceased as some heathen moralist might have spoken ; and often leave the reader quite unassured that their subject ever heard of, far less that he believed, the Gospel. The monumental inscriptions of the era of the Reformation and of the succeeding century are generally far preferable. They have, at least, no hesitation in speaking of Christ and Him crucified; in professing faith in His glorious second coming, and in the resurrection of the dead. And our own day has witnessed a very general return to better things. The Cross, Vol. 69.-No. 380.

4 1

that symbol of our redemption, now often supersedes the unmeaning urn, or other emblem of heathenism; and, in the majority of cases, the accompanying inscription speaks Christian language, and shows reverence for God's holy word.

Probably many of our readers can test this statement by visiting some old church in their neighbourhood, where the members of some noble, or knightly, family have been interred for numerous generations. They will trace the religious sentiment alike in the recumbent mediæval effigy, with hands clasped in prayer, and in the quaint inscription, recording some contemporary of Shakespeare and Bacon; they will be pained by its frequent absence amid long and pompous enumerations of the virtues and honours of the deceased judge or courtier of the later Stuart or Georgian era, and they may (let us hope) have to hail its re-appearance in the latest monuments of the series.

Or again, let them visit Westminster Abbey, and they will read there inscription after inscription on the tomb of hero, statesman, or man of letters, which would be equally suitable to that of a Greek or Roman who lived and died before the rising of the Sun of righteousness. What a charming contrast (especially remarkable, as belonging to the eighteenth century) is presented to many other epitaphs in the Abbey, by this text engraved over the mortal remains of Handel: “Awake, thou lute and harp! I myself will awake right early."*

Two less generally known monumental records from the opposite extremities of England will supply examples of the strange fancies of the writers of epitaphs in former days. Curiously enough, they are each found in a church bearing St. Michael's name; the one that of Penkevil near Tregothnan in Cornwall : the other that of Barton in Westmoreland, some miles from the beautiful lake of Ulleswater. In the former of these is the monument of the celebrated Mrs. Boscawen, the accomplished friend of Dr. Johnson and of Hannah More. The inscription which it bears concludes thus: “Her manners were the most agreeable, and her conversation the best of any lady with whom I ever had the happiness to be acquainted.”+ Little could “the great lexicographer" have thought, when he expressed, or his faithful Boswell when he recorded, this doubtless justly complimentary opinion, that it would be deemed the most suitable testimonial that could be produced to the worth of a departed Christian !

The other epitaph records the grief of Dr. Lancelot Dawes, Vicar of Barton parish, at the untimely death of his young and beloved wife. It is about a century older than that of Mrs. Boscawen, as its spelling bears witness :

“Under this stone, reader, inter'd doth lye

Beauty and virtue's true epitomy.
At her appearance the noone son
Blush'd and shrunk in 'cause quite undon.
In her concenter'd did all graces dwell :
God pluck'd my rose, that he might take a smel.
I'll say no more: but weeping wish I may
Soone with thy dear chaste ashes com to lay."

Stranger instances still could easily be produced. Indeed, rustic ignorance combined with unbecoming levity have perpetrated a number of epitaphs which would be a disgrace to these pages; and which can only call forth the laughter of the unthinking, and the regretful disapproval of the serious-minded. Our business is not with them on the present occasion, but with the errors of affectionate admiration; the mistakes of wellmeaning but unwise friends. They should reflect that when they enumerate the titles and honours, the rich mental endow. ments, or the personal charms of the deceased, they are but reckoning up and setting down the number and quality of the talents entrusted to His servant by the Great Master. For those talents that servant is now about to render an account. Whether they were few or many, signifies little now, in comparison with the all-important question whether they were wellemployed. Can friends count their sometime possessor happy, simply for having owned and left them behind him? Should they not rather shrink from putting in evidence the “ good things” which the departed “received in his life-time;" unless they can add thereto some ground for hoping that he furthermore “received the kingdom which cannot be shaken,” not even by that awful shock which makes all other goods fall from their possessor's hand ?

The general rule may then be safely laid down, that as little space as possible should be engrossed in epitaphs by those matters relating to the dead with which they have now no more concern: that the prominent place should be assigned to those eternal things with which they, from henceforth, exclusively have to do. Where great actions, or prominent usefulness, really demand it, let them be commemorated briefly to the glory of the Giver of all good gifts; but in such wise as to remind the reader that it is better to fight manfully under the Banner of the Cross, than to win great battles in earthly warfare; to form one of the “ general assembly of the first-born” hereafter, than "to command the applause of listening senates" in this world; to bear a part one day in the great song of the redeemed, than to entrance hearers now even by the sweetest and noblest strains. · Such considerations as these have not been wholly absent from the minds of the writers of the next class of epitaphs which we propose to notice. They seek, while preserving the memory of the departed, to instruct the living; thus agreeing with us as to the right end to keep in view. But in some cases from defective knowledge, in others from erroneous views of doctrine, they fail so to execute their laudable purpose, as to deserve entire approval. Some, while recommending the virtues of their subject to our imitation, by failing to base them on faith, might lead the unwary to suppose that “the branch can bear fruit of itself,” without “abiding in the vine.” Others speak of Heaven and its joys, but utter no word concerning Him who is alone “the Way” to it. Others again seem to reverse the saying heard by the holy exile in Patmos; by making the good works of the departed precede him to claim admission for him into paradise, instead of " follow" him to bear witness to his faith, and reap the reward which is of grace, not of debt.

Less objectionable, though not yet wholly satisfactory, are those numerous epitaphs which simply try to remind the reader of his own mortality; for, at least, they can teach him no untruth. Nay, is not theirs a weighty lesson? Is it not well that those, whose minds are eagerly set on achieving worldly distinctions, should be reminded that

“The paths of glory lead but to the grave" ? That those who are raised above their fellows in this life should hear the poet's address to one who was once what they now are :

“How loved, how valued once, avails thee not,

To whom related, or by whom begot,
A heap of dust alone remains of thee :

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be." May we not all profit by the solemn appeal of the dead to the living, whether couched in the quaint but vigorous Latin of Balde's elegy on a departed empress

“Quod es fuimus; sumus quod eris:

Præcessimus, tuque sequeris :" or in the homely and misspelt verses which meet our eye near the porch of an old Westmoreland church

“Remember, Man, when thou goest by,

As thou art now, so wonce was I:
As I am now, so must thou be:

Prepare thou then to follow me."
Strange that we should need to be reminded of such an

by cenithe short recHashed upo

obvious truth. But so it is. “All men think all men mortal but themselves.” The one step between man and death is veiled from his sight; and advancing years, by their long experience of living, remove death further from the imagination, while they bring it nearer in reality. Anything, then, which brings home to our minds the fact that we too must die, may, through God's blessing, arouse us to serious endeavours to prepare for that great change. There is a story told of one Guerricus, who was converted by reading the fifth chapter of Genesis. He read there of Adam and his sons, who reckoned their years by centuries, as we ours by decades; and yet, in every case save one, the short record of their long lives ended thus : “And he died."* Then flashed upon him a sudden conviction that even so would the history of his own far briefer life soon be summed up; and he turned to God.

But such cases are not common; and this is why the epitaph which enforces no other lesson than that of man's mortality, cannot be pronounced entirely satisfactory. The worldling has his own application of the doctrine of the shortness of life, and it is a very evil one : “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;" and he may turn even from “the cold Hic Jacets of the dead” to practise it. Man is like one dwelling in a lovely island, which the sea is, slowly but surely, swallowing up. Its margin, where he played in childhood, is now deep sunk beneath the waters; the rose gardens of his youth have vanished too; and already the waves lift up white and threatening crests, and he knows that before very long they will cover everything else. But this knowledge has no practical effect upon him, unless, at the same time, he discerns the ship ready to bear him to a safer and happier shore: so long as that is hidden from his sight, he will only turn the more eagerly, because his time is so short, to pluck such fruit of honour, riches, or pleasure, as the devouring waves may have yet left within his reach. Therefore, let the hand that points out to us that “the things which are seen are temporal,” make haste to direct our eye beyond them to the “things eternal.” Let the voice which speaks to us of death, be sure also to proclaim to us life. For

“ 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant;

Oh, life, not death, for which we pant;

More life, and fuller, that we want." Herein lies the great defect of that otherwise faultless poem, Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard. It speaks soothingly and tenderly of death ; but one graceful stanza follows another to the end, without presenting a single distinctively Christian truth or hope to the mind. These things ought not so to be,

* Jeremy Taylor, "Contemplations of the State of Man," b. i. ch. 1.