The memory of almost every person who has been present at a funeral, attended by a protestant minister of a certain class, will furnish him with recollections of these preposterous harangues of attempted consolation. The mourners are instructed that it is sinful to grieve; that grief implies want of faith in the great truths of the gospel; that Christianity forbids it; and, more than all, that it argues doubt of the happiness of the deceased; or a murmuring want of submission to the Divine will. Such doctrines, in the minds of weak and superstitious mourners who feel that it is not in their power to repress grief, inspire painful distrust and self-reproach; and, in men more disciplined in the ways of the world, and more acquainted with human nature, contempt for the ignorant folly or gross hypocrisy of the declaimer. The unchanging constitution of human nature revolts at such maxims. Whoever affects to be insensible to the loss of a child, relative, or friend, is either a stranger to his own perceptions, practises deceit, or has no heart to be grieved. Christianity is preëminently the religion of tenderness, and forbids the indulgence of no inherent emotion of our nature within its proper limits. It is most absurd of all, to suppose that God has forbidden, or interprets as murmurs, the sorrows that we feel from his stroke. There are few persons so disinterested, even if they were assured beyond a doubt, that the person they mourn is happy, as not to grieve at the final earthly severance which cuts off the accustomed communion of heart; and interdicts the mourner from the sight and participation of that happiness. The cause of Christianity has suffered beyond calculation, from the exaggeration of its requirements by weak enthusiasts, or designing bigots. Distorted views and impracticable requisitions have disgusted more persons with the system of the gospel than Hume’s argument against miracles, or all the sophistry of unbelief. The gospel takes into view the whole nature of man, and all its precepts announce, _nolumus leges naturæ mutari_--_we will that the laws of nature should not be changed_. Note 12, page 61. It is not necessary to recur to the history of great revolutions to furnish the most impressive examples of human vicissitude and instability. The Latin poet had reason for his maxim, who said, ‘Si fortuna juvat caveto tolli; Si fortuna tonat caveto mergi.’ Life in every country and in all time has been full of affecting instances of the young, beautiful, endowed and opulent struck down in the brightest presage of their dawn. That is the true philosophy which draws, from continual exposure to these blows, a motive, to make the most, in the way of innocent enjoyment, of the period that is in our power. Note 13, page 62.