nity--Let us, I say, beseech God that He would give to
them, as well as to us, that comfortable and wholesome faith; and
evermore defend them and us--if it seem good in His gracious sight--from
all adversity.

And surely we need that faith--those of us at least who know what we have
lost--in the face of such a catastrophe as was announced in this Abbey on
this day week; which thrilled this congregation with the awful news--That
one of the most gifted men in Europe; the most eloquent of all our
preachers--the most energetic of all our prelates; the delight of so many
of the most refined and cultivated; the comforter of so many pious souls,
not only by his sermons, not only by his secret counsels, but by those
exquisite Confirmation addresses, to have lost which is a spiritual loss
incalculable--those Confirmation addresses which touched and ennobled the
hearts alike of children and of parents, and made so many spirits, young
and old, indebted to him from thenceforth for ever--That this man, with
his enormous capacity and will for doing his duty like a valiant man, and
doing each duty better than any of us his clergy had ever seen it done
before--with his genius too, now so rare, and yet so needed, for
governing his fellow-men--That he, in the fulness of his power, his
health, his practical example, his practical success, should vanish in a
moment: and that immense natural vitality, that organism of forces so
various and so delicate, just as it was developing to perfection under
long and careful self-education, should be lost for ever to this earth:
leaving England, and her colonies, and indeed all Christendom, so much
the poorer, so much the more weak; and inflicting--forget not that--a
bitter pang on hundreds of loving hearts: and all by reason of the
stumbling of a horse.

And why? Our reason, our conscience, our moral sense; that, by virtue of
which we are not brutes, but men, forces us to ask that question: even if
no answer be found to it in earth or heaven. What was the important
_why_ which lay hid behind that little how?--The means were so paltry:
the effect was so vast--There must have been a final cause, a purpose,
for that death: or the fact would be altogether hideous--a scribble
without a meaning--a skeleton without a soul. Why did he die?

"I became dumb and opened not my mouth; for it was Thy doing."

So says the Burial psalm. So let us say likewise.

"I became dumb:" not with rage, not with despai