RISEN BY PERSEVERANCE. 



World and the New, are drawn towards it as towards the resting- 

 place of a dear personal friend. Many are the flowers that 

 have been strewn — many the tears that have been shed — by 

 the grateful affection of the poor that have cried, of the 

 fatherless, and of those that have none to help them. May 

 I speak to them a few sacred words, that will come perhaps 

 with a new meaning and a deeper force, because they come 

 from the lips of their lost friend, because they are the most 

 solemn utterances of lips now closed foi- ever in the grave ? 

 They are extracted from the will of Charles Dickens, dated 

 1 2th May 1869, and will now be heard by many for the first 

 time. After the most emphatic injunctions respecting the 

 inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner of his 

 funeral, — injunctions which have been carried out to the very 

 letter, — he thus continues : 



' " / direct that my name be inscribed in plain English letters 

 on my tomb. I conjure my friends on no account to make me the 

 subject of any monument^ memorial, or testimonial whatever. I 

 rest my claim to the remembrance of my country on my published 

 works, and to the remembrance of my friends in their experience 

 of me in additio7i thereto. I commit my soul to the mercy of 

 God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and I exhort 

 my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching 

 of the New Testament, in its broad spirit, and to put no faith 

 in any man^s narrow construction of its letter here or the7-e." 



' In that simple but sufficient faith he lived and died. In 

 that simple and sufficient faith he bids you live and die. If 

 any of you have learnt from his works the value — the eternal 

 value — of generosity, of purity, of kindness, of unselfishness, 

 and have learnt to show these in your own hearts and lives, 

 then remember that these are the best monuments, memorials. 



