It
was an old book, bound in brown leather, and ornamented with gold, with
a picture of a man in a black gown and a round black cap and a white
collar in the beginning; and there was a list of all the sermons with
their names and the texts. I read it through, to see which sounded the
most interesting, and I didn't care much for any of them. However, the
last but one was called "A Funeral Sermon, preached at the Obsequies of
the Right Honourable the Countess of Carbery;" and I wondered what
obsequies were, and who the Countess of Carbery was, and I thought I
would preach that sermon and try to find out.
There was a very long text, and it was not a very easy one. It was:
"For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which
cannot be gathered up again: neither doth GOD respect any
person: yet doth He devise means that His banished be not expelled from
Him."
The sermon wasn't any easier than the text, and half the _s_'s were like
_f_'s which made it rather hard to preach, and there was Latin mixed up
with it, which I had to skip. I had preached two pages when I got into
the middle of a long sentence, of which part was this: "Every trifling
accident discomposes us; and as the face of waters wafting in a storm so
wrinkles itself, that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow
like a grave: so do our great and little cares and trifles first make
the wrinkles of old age, and then they dig a grave for us.
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