Ireland-Poor pious Clergy Soci-
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JANUARY, 1827. [No. 1. Vol. XXVII.
RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS.
For the Christian Observer.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE BISHOP HEBER.
WHILE preparing to lay before our readers a brief memoir of the beloved and lamented Bishop Heber, our eye rests upon the following impressive passage in a sermon preached by him a few months before his death, and which has just issued from the press of Bishop's College at Calcutta. The discourse is entitled "The Omnipresence of God," and was preached at the consecration of the church of Secrole, near Benares. What an affecting comment does the sudden bereavement which has afflicted so many hearts afford to the truth of the solemn reflections which we are about to quote!-reflections, however, which, solemn as they are, carry with them a sacred solace, since they shew that, violent as was the shock caused to others by the sudden departure of this valuable man, in the full tide of life and the zenith of his usefulness, to himself death could never arrive an unexpected stranger; it could never find him unprepared for that blessed world to which he has been -we will not say so prematurely summoned. The passage to which we allude is the following:
"Alas! have we forgotten how thin a screen that is which separates us from this glorious and awful spectacle of Jehovah's Majesty? Let but the word go forth from his mouth, let but one of his innumerable ministers cut the thread of our days, and set our spirit free from the curtains of this bodily tabernacle, and in a moment we should perCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 301.
haps be introduced to that very scene of which the thought is so dreadful to us. In a moment our soul would find itself introduced to
the vast world of invisible beings; would behold, it may be, the angels of God ascending and descending as ministers of his will between heaven and earth; and our Maker himself in his boundless glory, and our Redeemer standing at his right hand. This moment, while I speak, this prospect is offered for the first time to many who, in the different nations of the world, are passing from life into eternity; this moment it may be offered to any of us who are here assembled. Surely the Lord is in this place, and we knew it not. How dreadful is this place! This place may to each of us become, according as we are prepared for the passage, the gate of hell or heaven!"
The Right Reverend Reginald the second son of the Reverend Reginald Heber, of Marton Hall, York, and of Hodnet Hall, Salop, was born in the year 1783 at Malpas, in Cheshire *. He was sent, in
* There is some confusion of dates, which we have endeavoured to rectify, in the several accounts that have been published of Bishop Heber's life. One, for example, dates his birth in 1780, another in 1784; but neither, we believe, correctly. Again, the Asiatic Journal, the Gentleman's Magazine, and some other biographical sketches, remark, that he could not have been much more than seventeen dating his journey during his undergraduateship, instead of in the year 1805. Again, Mr. Robinson, his lordship's chaplain, in a note to his funeral sermon, says, that he was chosen preacher at Lincoln's Inn in 1821: the right date ap pears to be May 1822.
when he made his tour on the continent;