He began: "'In the midst of life we are in death.' But they who turn from the light of eternal truth, bear the gloom of death within their souls. They live as if they thought never to die, and die as though they were never to live again. What grief and terror will overwhelm them on the day when the graves open and the dead come forth to receive the crown of glory or the sentence of eternal condemnation. How the words of the Judge will thunder in their ears: 'I offered you salvation and ye rejected it with scorn and turned a deaf ear unto my message.' In your vain self-righteousness you chose to be your own deliverers, and have pronounced your own doom. Then will your pride bow before the throne of the Highest, and defiance be crushed before the majesty of the Son of Man. Then lips will sue for mercy, which on earth overflowed with blasphemy, denying with Peter and saying: 'I know not this man.' But we, who stand around this sad grave, will unite in silent prayer to God, and implore him not to enter into judgment with this our brother, to suffer a ray of his eternal mercy to transfigure and cleanse from sin the frail erring life, which too early reached its end!" An unbroken silence followed these words. The clergyman had folded his hands over his book and closed his eyes in prayer. Suddenly Franzelius' suppressed voice was heard amid the group of friends who were standing at the foot of the grave: "Let me speak, for I cannot be silent, I should despise myself, I should be a miserable coward, if I could hear such words spoken over his grave, without uttering a protest in the name of those who have known and loved him. What is that I hear? 'let there be no scandal?' Say that to those, who have not hesitated to carry the strife of opinions into the stillness of the churchyard, where even the bitterest enemies lie in death quietly side by side. No, my friends," he continued in a loud voice, springing upon one of the snow covered mounds, "we at least have not assembled around this grave, to stammer an abject petition for a poor sinner who, unless justice be tempered by mercy, is forever lost. This dead man will never be lost to us, and as by the might of his love and intellect, he has indeed redeemed himself from the curse of frail mortality, the terrors of blind delusion and the bonds of selfishness, his memory will help us to free ourselves also and to become more worthy of the joy of having been loved by him. For yes, he has loved you too, my friends who never saw his face or heard his voice. His great heart beat for all his brothers, for all who were poor and miserable, for all the children of this world, who come they know not whence and go they know not whither, and yet are too honest to console themselves with fantastic tales and be lulled to rest by idle dreams. What can be called sacred, if his grave is not? For do you know _whom_ we are burying here? A laborer, my friends, who was