He commences by saying “Tread softly and circumspectly in this . . . narrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtuously; leaven not good actions, nor render virtue disputable.” Again, “In this virtuous voyage of thy life . . . let not disappointment cause despondency, nor difficulty despair.” “Rest not in an ovation, but a triumph over thy passions. Let anger walk hanging down the head; let malice go manacled, and envy fettered after thee.”
“Be charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and lose not the glory of the mite. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them, and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent. Though a cup of cold water may not be without its reward, yet stick not thou for wine and oil for the wounds of the distressed.”
“Let not the law of thy country be the non ultra of thy honesty. . . . Join Gospel righteousness with legal right.”
“Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath, but write thy wrongs in ashes. Draw the curtain of night upon injuries, shut them up in the tower of oblivion, and let them be as though they had not been. To forgive our enemies, yet hope that God will punish them, is not to forgive enough.”
“Think not that always good which thou thinkest thou can always make good, nor that concealed which the sun doth not behold. There is no darkness unto conscience; which can see without light, and in the deepest obscurity give a clear draught of things, which the cloud of dissimulation hath concealed from all eyes.”
As final quotations from “Christian Morals” let me give these sentences, “Bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and generous honesty, are the gems of noble minds,”—and
“Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind. . . . Tranquility is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure. . . . Forget not the capital end, and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. . . . Think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account.”
I want neither to tire you, nor to read you a sermon at second-hand. So having now shown you the religious side of Browne’s character, let me give you some idea of his learning and acquirements and general industry.
In his grand treatise on Hydriotaphia or Urn-burial, which he wrote consequent upon the discovery of some ancient sepulchral urns at Old Walsingham, in Norfolk, he exemplifies the great stores of knowledge which by his reading and memory he had accumulated. He quaintly prefaces this treatise by saying, “Who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?” And then he goes on to describe the various modes of disposal of the dead in various ages, and among different nations. For instance, he says that “Carnal interment or burying was of the elder date,” as shown by the older examples of Abraham and the Patriarchs. “But the practice of burning was also of great antiquity, and of no slender extent.” And he illustrates this by the Grecian funerals of Homer; the funeral pyre of Hector; and by early records of the practice in various countries of Asia, in Rome itself, and in different countries of both Europe and Africa.
Touching the various modes of disposal of the dead, he says, “The Indian Brachmans thought it the noblest way to end their days in fire.