ith a
formal wave of the hand, now read aloud the prayer for the burial of
the dead and then approached the edge of the grave, into which the
coffin was already lowered.

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 terro