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... | A novel and yet impressive burial service was performed on Thursday afternoon last, in the Southern Cemetery, Dunedin, over the remains of the infant daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Braithwaite. When the coffin had been lowered into the grave, Mr. Braithwaite delivered the following address: | ||
“We have assembled on this spot, friends, to inter the body of our infant daughter in its natural home, to ultimately become component parts of mother earth. However much we wished to keep her here, we recognise only the loving kindness of God in thus freeing, by the change called ‘death,’ the infantile spirit of our dear child from the sufferings it underwent, and that by His wise, beneficent, and unerring laws, the freed spirit has entered upon a state of progressive existence suitable to its new condition of life, to be tended and cared for by earnest and willing friends gone before. We are at this time impressed with the sublime and deeply suggestive words attributed to Jesus Christ—‘Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’” | |||
Mr. Braithwaite then read with much feeling and expression the following beautiful lines by John Pierpoint: | |||
{{Style P-Poem|poem=“I know her fair face is hid, | |||
Under the coffin lid; | |||
Closed are her eyes, cold is her forehead fair; | |||
My hand that marble felt, | |||
O’er it in prayer I knelt; | |||
Yet my heart whispers that ''she'' is not there. | |||
Not there! where then is ''she''? | |||
The form I used to see | |||
Was but the raiment that she used to wear; | |||
The grave that now doth press | |||
Upon the cast-off dress, | |||
Is but her wardrobe lock’d—''she'' is not there. | |||
She lives! in all the past | |||
She lives! nor to the last, | |||
Of seeing her again, will I despair; | |||
In dreams I see her now, | |||
And on her angel brow | |||
I see it written—‘Thou shalt see me there.’ | |||
Yes, we all live to God; | |||
Father, thy chastening rod, | |||
So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear, | |||
That in the Spirit Land, | |||
Meeting at Thy right hand, | |||
’Twill be our heaven to find that she is there.”}} | |||
The speaker then concluded as follows: | |||
“We now visibly consign her body to the earth, ‘dust to dust,’ and resign her spirit with confidence to the mercy, justice, and immutable laws of the Great Father of us all. Farewell! Invisibly her spirit will be ever present.”''—Saturday Advertiser, Dunedin.'' | |||
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