Notes:
Sermon 136: On Mourning for the Dead
1This was Wesley’s seventh written sermon,
Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley’s Early Sermons’, pp. 110-12.
JW, I.48-49.
2What may be most obvious in this sermon is its air of ‘Christian stoicism’, which is to say, its outright condemnation of grief as unworthy of Christians and a sign of a deficiency in their faith and state of grace (‘Grief is the parent of so much evil, and the occasion of so little good to mankind.’). This is all the more remarkable in a funeral sermon in the presence of young Griffiths’s parents, his fiancée (Nancy Tooker), and other friends. It is, therefore, something of a variation on the general commonplaces of the ars moriendi in the face of death itself.
3It was first published in the Arminian Magazine in 1797,
XX.422-26.
2 Samuel 12:23
In the twelfth chapter of the second book of Samuel, at the twenty-third verse:
‘Jo Griffith’ is added below the announcement of text, probably later as a filing note. For the accepted spelling, ‘Griffiths’, cf. Alumni Oxoniensis (London, 1887).
1[1.] The resolve of a wise and good man,
I.e., David.
2 Sam. 12:22.
2 Sam. 12:16.
2 Sam. 12:20.
MS orig. read ‘strength’; it was underlined, for deletion, and replaced by a word which seems to read ‘justn[ess]’.
2[2.] That he whose own pious and well-grounded reflections afforded him the most solid comfort should reason on so solemn 04:238an occasion with such accuracy and closeness is no more a matter of admiration than that he who then reasoned with such accuracy and closeness should find the best comfort in his own pious reflections.
3[3.] To what end, saith this holy and resigned mourner, should I fast, now the child is dead? Why should I add grief to grief; why bring a voluntary increase to the affliction I already sustain? Would it not be equally useless to him and me? Have my tears or complaints the power to refix his soul in her decayed, forsaken mansion?
Cf. this metaphor, of the soul in her mansion, with O. W. Holmes’s The Chambered Nautilus (1858): ‘Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul’. Holmes cannot have read Wesley; what was their common source?
See No. 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §2 and n.
Isa. 25:8; also Rev. 21:4.
See Isa. 35:10; 51:11.
4[4.] The unprofitable and, by consequence, the sinful nature of profusely sorrowing for the dead is easily deduced from the former part of this reflection; in the latter we have
This paragraph in the MS is heavily corrected at this point. The original text runs: ‘In the latter we have the strongest motives to enforce our striving against it…’. Over ‘the strongest motives’ Wesley began an interlined correction, ‘an admirable reas[on]’, but chose instead to delete the whole portion and continue instead with ‘a remedy…’.
5[5.] Grief, in general, is the parent of so much evil, and the occasion of so little good to mankind, that it may be wondered how it found a place in our nature. ’Twas indeed of man’s own, not of God’s creation, who may permit but [is] never the author of 04:239evil. The same hour gave birth to grief and sin, as the same moment will deliver us from both: for neither did it exist before human nature was corrupted, nor will it continue when that is restored to its ancient perfection.
For a development of this theme of the restored imago Dei, see No. 1, Salvation by Faith, §1 and n.; see also No. 13, On Sin in Believers, I.4 and n.
6[6.] Indeed, in this present state of things, that Wise Being who knows well to extract good out of evil has shown us one way of making this uneasy frailty highly conducive both to the increase of our virtue and happiness. Even grief, if it lead us to repentance and proceed from a serious sense of our faults, is not to be repented of, since those who thus ‘sow in tears shall reap in joy’.
Ps. 126:5.
7[7.] From the very nature of grief, which is an uneasiness in the mind on the apprehension of some present evil, it appears that its arising in us on any other occasion is owing entirely to our want of judgment. Is anything but sin, are any of those accidents in the language of men termed misfortunes—such as reproach, poverty, loss of life, or even of friends—real evils? So far from it that if we dare believe our Creator they are often positive blessings. They all work together for our good,
See Rom. 8:28.
See No. 133, ‘Death and Deliverance’, §8.
Matt. 5:12.
8[8.] But what fully evinces the utter absurdity of almost all grief, unless that for our own failings, is that the occasion of it is past before it begins. To recall what has already been is flatly impossible and beyond the reach of Omnipotence itself.
As to the question of logical possibilities and impossibilities, see No. 118, ‘On the Omnipresence of God’, II.6-7.
Wesley had first written: ‘Let those who are fond of misery, if any such there be, indulge their minds in this fruitless inquietude’—and then revised it as here rendered.
904:240[9.] If any species of this idle, unprofitable passion be more peculiarly useless than the rest, ’tis that we feel when we sorrow for the dead. We destroy the health of our body and impair the strength of our minds, and take no price for those invaluable blessings; we give up our present without any prospect of future advantage, without a possibility of either recalling them hither or profiting diem where they are.
10[10.] As indifferent a proof as this is of our wisdom, ’tis still a worse of our affection to the deceased. ’Tis the property of envy, and not of love, to repine at another’s happiness; to weep because all tears are wiped from his eyes. Shall it disturb us, who call ourselves his friends, that a weary wanderer has at length come to his wished-for home? Nay, weep we rather for ourselves, who still want that happy ease, to whom that rest appears yet only in prospect.
11[11.] Gracious is our God and merciful, who, knowing what was in man—that passion, when it has conquered reason, always takes the appearance of it
Cf. Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1732), Epistle III, l. 153.
See Jer. 31:11.
12[12.] Against this fault, which is inconsistent with those virtues, and
therefore tacitly forbidden in the precepts that enjoin them, St. Paul warns us in
express words: ‘I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which
are asleep; that ye sorrow not even as others, who have no hope. For if we believe
that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God
bring with him…. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.’
1 Thess. 4:13,
etc. [14, 18].
See Luke 16:26.
13[13.] What he was I am both unable to paint in suitable colours, and unwilling to attempt it. Although the chief, at least most common argument, for those laboured encomiums of the dead
A rejection here of a settled convention in funeral sermons as, e.g., Bishop John Buckeridge’s encomium on his old friend, Lancelot Andrewes (Nov. 11, 1626), published in XCVI Sermons, edited by Laud and Buckeridge (1629), or Bishop Francis Atterbury’s sermon at the funeral of Lady Cutts in 1698 (Sermon VI, Fourteen Sermons [1708], pp. 173-207), or William Bates’s famous funeral sermon for Richard Baxter (1692). But Wesley had an ally here in Richard Steele; cf. The Tatler, No. 73 (Sept. 24-27, 1709): ‘It is to be hoped that the living may not be neglected.’ See also, ibid., No. 78 (Oct. 6-8, 1709). But cf. Wesley’s own later encomiums on Whitefield and Fletcher (Nos. 53 and 114).
A textual reconstruction incorporating material from the verso of p. 5, but which clearly belongs here.
14[14.] This indeed is an end that is visibly served in these ill-timed commendations; of what other use they are is hard to say. ’Tis of no service to the dead to celebrate his actions, since he has the applause of God
In the manuscript the phrase, ‘the Holy Angels’, was at first included here and then underlined for deletion; cf. No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, I.6 and n.
See Luke 16:27-31; and No. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, on this same text; cf. Atterbury, Fourteen Sermons (1708), pp. 327-63. Wesley first wrote ‘convinced’, and then changed it to ‘converted’.
1504:242[15.] Let it suffice to have paid my last duty to him (whether he is now hovering o’er these lower regions, or retired already to the mansions of eternal glory)
An early reference to what will develop into a debate over ‘the middle state’; see No. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, I.3 and n.
The manuscript clearly reads ‘ingenious’; changed to ‘ingenuous’ by the editor or printer of AM. See OED for the history of their synonymous usage; cf. Wesley’s later uses of ‘ingenious’ (to connote both intelligence and openness) in Nos. 127, ‘On the Wedding Garment’, §18; and 128, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human heart’, proem and §3.
16[16.] At such a loss, if considered without the alleviating circumstances, who can blame him that drops a tear? The tender meltings of a heart dissolved with fondness when it reflects on several agreeable moments which have now taken their flight never to return, give an authority to some degree of sorrow; nor will human frailty permit an ordinary acquaintance to take his last leave of them without it. Who then can conceive, much less describe, the strong emotion, the secret workings of soul, which a parent feels on such an occasion? None, surely, but those who are parents themselves; unless those few who have experienced the power of friendship—than which human nature, on this side of the grave, knows no closer, no softer, no stronger tie!
17[17.] At the tearing asunder these sacred bands, well may we allow without blame some parting pangs—but the difficulty is to put as speedy a period to them as religion and reason command us. What can give us effectual ease after that rupture which has left such an aching void in our breast? What indeed but the reflection already mentioned, which can be never inculcated too often, that we are hasting to him again? That, pass but a few years, perhaps hours, which will soon be over, and not only this but all our other desires will be satisfied; when we shall exchange the gaudy shadow of pleasure we have enjoyed for sincere, substantial, untransitory happiness.
18[18.] With this consideration well imprinted in our mind ’tis far better, as Solomon observes, to go [to] the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.
Eccles. 7:2.
Ibid.
19[19.] If we are at any time in danger of being overcome by dwelling too long on the gloomy side of this prospect, to the giving us pain, the making us unfit for the duties and offices of life, or the impairing our faculties of body or mind—which proceeding, as has been already shown, is both absurd, unprofitable, and sinful—let us immediately recur to the bright side of it, and reflect with cheerfulness and gratitude that our own time passeth away like a shadow;
Ps. 144:4 (BCP); Wesley revised this passage several times in the MS; one of the early versions read: ‘…of it, which will inspire us with gratitude as well as humility that our present life passeth…’.
See Job 19:25.
See 1 Cor. 15:53-55.
20[20.] Now to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost be honour, majesty, and dominion, world without end!
Amen
Note this brief, almost abrupt, ascription; see No. 1, Salvation by Faith, III.9 and n.
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Entry Title: Sermon 136: On Mourning for the Dead