898 ( 2 ) AUGUST 16 1906 The Christian Register

FUNERALS in summer have an added sadness from into the published version as Newman's own writing . the absence of friends and , at times , even of one's own It was evidently inspired by a desire to float a little minister , as the illness was harder to bear in the lack of the good theology with a popular hymn . The theology family physician . But , on the other hand , Nature , may have been good , but the poetry showed a sad especially in a summer so shaded and fostered by fogs falling off from the exquisite quality of the original verses . as this has been , is kindly to the mourner . She speaks , through her own abounding life , conquered from the seeming death of winter , of resurrection and immortality .

Winding the Clock . Not even the full force of friends and helpers might make head against the suggestions of a grave cut in Sunday in the household has changed in some ways frozen ground among dead leaves and fallen branches . during our generation . Life is freer and lighter . The Neither winter nor summer proves anything , but the frugal repast of cold meat has become the most lux soul is a poet and lives on intimations and symbols . urious dinner of the week . The tons of baked beans

or of fish balls which a long - settled minister calcu

lated he had preached to during the years of his pas SPEAKING of funerals reminds us that we have often

torate have given place to dainties from all over the heard two poems read on such occasions when it seemed

world . The sedate walk through the cemetery has as if they were not quite clearly understood . One is developed into all manner of ' week - end ” excursions " Oh , may I join the Choir Invisible . " Is it not and house parties . There are corners of the country , sometimes hastily assumed that this is the choir of

it is said by travellers , where there is a less regular at angels or of those gone before into heaven ? Evi tendance at church than in Puritan days . From some dently this is not only not the sense of the poem , but quarters we hear counsel of compromise with the Sab rather the reverse . George Eliot had in mind those

bath of our forefathers , -a “ Continental Sunday , " left on earth who are “ the minds made better by our

whatever may be conceived under that name . The presence , ” -- the influence which we exert upon those

Rev. John Cotton , wandering back to Boston from who conduct our goodness to future generations . It is

wherever he is , would find a strange sort of Sunday rather a denial than an affirmation of personal immor

there , and would fancy that “ Merrymount , ” the tality . It is an exquisite supplement to the thought of

abomination of earlier days , had avenged the tyranny heavenly hosts , but it should be so understood and not

of olden time by taking possession of its solemn enemy . used alone by those who hold to the double immortality .

One custom , however , survives , -- the winding of the clock . The tall Willard on the stairs may have mul tiplied into French timepieces all over the house , which ,

as Lowell said , when he listened through the sleepless The other poem is larger instead of smaller than the

nights of his last illness , express " their different opin immediate lesson of bereavement , — " Lead , kindly Light ,

ions . " of the hour . . But , whatever the means of count amid the encircling gloom . ” The close of the last stanza

ing the minutes may be , the failure even of our inven has misled many into believing that the " gloom " is

tive generation to discover the secret of perpetual mo the grief and doubt that come with the death of those

tion leaves it still necessary to wind the clock once a we love . But readers of Newman's Life know that he

week . wrote these verses during his voyage to the Mediter That once is , by common consent , Sunday . Then , ranean , when he was dreading the separation and aliena on the Christian holiday , the smaller Christian era begins , tion from many friends which his part in the “ Oxford

and time takes a new start . The jaded machinery Movement ” was to bring upon him , and when , perhaps ,

feels a fresh pull from the lifted weights or the tight he had begun to suspect that he would be carried farther

ened spring , and begins with greater vigor the life of than he had expected to go . They are , therefore , a prayer another week of service . From some source of infor for light in any perplexity or dread , in bereavement

mation , too , -it may be the solemn church bell , or the indeed , but also in any other trouble , especially if its rationalistic regulator of the watchmaker , or the sci bearings and consequences are not fully understood .

entific precision of some electric clock that hitches its The frequent use of it at funerals has given it associa

mechanism to a star through the observatory at Wash tions which unfit it for that use in public worship for

ington , -from some authority the time is corrected as which it is admirably appropriate and for which prob well as vitalized , and heaven and earth are brought ably the music was written to it . It belongs to any time into closer accord . when we face a future that is dark , without necessarily

In a larger sense winding the clock is the right use being sad . The “ gloom ” “ encircles " us now , but it

of Sunday . The man who lets that day go without may not surround us by and by .

bringing more vigor and freshness into his life has lost an opportunity . We will not stick for methods or

even for particular ideals ; but we will say that he who ONE of our ministers who read the latter poem at a does not wake Monday morning feeling that the wheels meeting was asked by one of his hearers why he had of power within him have been invigorated and have not read the whole of it . He replied with surprise that become more likely to furnish him with strength of he had , but was told that there was another verse that mind and body , of will and ambition , sufficient for the came between the second and third stanzas as he had week to come , is a foolish man . It will be hard for him given them . There came by the morrow's mail some to find any bargain during the six days equal to that lines which the minister could not recall having

recall having which he threw away on the first day of the week . ever seen before and which were not in any hymn For , though Sunday is the most ancient of holidays , book within his reach . Nor did Newman's own version , coming from far back in the mists of the morning of in his published volume of poems , contain them . By a the race in the plain of Asia , it was never more needed strange coincidence , a daily paper of the very next day , than it is to - day . Few phrases are more common on without the slightest connection with the circumstances the lips of the world's workers than that they are “ run mentioned , referred to the fact that a Canadian clergy down . ” The springs of life are relaxed . Their pull man had written an extra stanza , and that it had crept is weak . The man goes about his business , the woman