"He was buried." A Sermon for Easter Even

Transcribed from the 1849 D. Batten edition by David Price.
A SERMON
FOR
EASTER EVEN.
BY THOMAS MACGILL,
CURATE OF CLAPHAM, EVENING PREACHER AT THE MAGDALEN HOSPITAL.
Clapham : PRINTED BY D. BATTEN.
1849.
If there be any profits from the sale of this publication , they will be added to the funds for Building a Temporary Church in Clapham .
1 Cor. xv. 4.—“He was buried.”
Who has not witnessed a funeral! Who is unacquainted with the emotions that possess the heart whilst carrying the remains of a beloved friend to the grave! And even when we have no interest in the deceased beyond the ties of a common humanity, there is a majesty in death itself that overawes the mind, and the gloomy pomp that proclaims death’s triumph arrests the thoughtlessness of man and repeats to him the lesson of the Bible—“The grave is thine house, and thou must make thy bed in the darkness.” Who has not felt his curiosity awakened when some splendid train of mourners has passed by, declaring by the parade in which corruption sits in mockery, how noble, or how renowned, or how rich the victim on whom the hand of the destroyer has fallen, and how utterly vain and empty are all human glories. And who has not experienced a hallowed sympathy when he has met a little band hurrying towards the churchyard all that is mortal of some friendless man, who lived unknown and died unbewailed, and who now seems to be stealing out of a world that had scarcely acknowledged his existence,—yet declaring in his undistinguished departure that “death has passed upon all men, because all have sinned.”
To-day I invite you to contemplate the funeral ceremonies of the Prince of Life, of Him who lay down amid the mansions of the dead, that by dying He might destroy death and him that had the power of death.