Handel conducted his work, was carried fainting from the hall, and in
less than a week had passed away. His own wish, when he knew how near
the end loomed, was that he might die on Good Friday, "in hopes," he
said, "of meeting my good God and sweet Saviour on the day of His
resurrection." And in this trustful spirit he went to the God he had so
worthily worshipped.
His funeral was intended to be private, but thousands came to it, and
though no trace remains of the music sung on that occasion, I cannot
help hoping that some boy’s clear voice rang through the aisles as he
sang "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Nothing would have been so
fitting, and those are the words, nobler far than any epitaph, which the
good taste of some friend caused to be inscribed on his monument in the
Poets’ Corner.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*WILBERFORCE AND HIS FELLOW-WORKERS*
The desire of Abou Ben Adhem that his name might be handed on as one
"who loved his fellow-men" would form a fitting epitaph not only to
those great-hearted workers in the cause of humanity whom the Abbey has
delighted to honour—William Wilberforce, the liberator of the slave, and
David Livingstone, the missionary and explorer in Darkest Africa—but
also to those others who toiled with them in the same great cause of
freedom, and whose claims to the grateful recollection of the nation are
recorded only by monuments—Granville Sharp, Jonas Hanway, Zachary
Macaulay, Fowell Buxton, and Anthony Astley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury.
A few words first about one of these latter, Granville Sharp, for he it
was who became the pioneer of that noble band who never ceased from
their labours till they had freed the slave on British territory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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