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PREFACE

EVERY circumstance connected with funerals is impressive; every object is calculated to affect the heart and excite to serious reflections. Mourners, agonizing with grief, need the balm of consolation; attendants, looking into the grave, are open to conviction; all are prepared to receive a word in season. An opportunity so auspicious for instruction ought not to be neglected; a scene so solemn should not be suffered to close without some religious improvement.

Death is replete with terror and mystery. It breaks the spring of life, and reduces the body to putrifying dust; it dissolves every relation in society; separates the immortal spirit from its former mansion, and introduces it to a new and permanent state of happiness or misery in another world. An event so vast and momentous in itself, and productive of such a train of changes and interesting consequences has always arrested the attention, and aroused the affections of survivors. In every age,