deeply mourn His death and burial, be filled with renewed joy; nor will He need this embalmment of yours, for when He rises from the dead He will appear in great glory. He will have put on immortality, and death shall no more have dominion over Him.
Learn thou too, O my soul, from the Burial of Jesus to meditate with profit upon the dissolution of thy own body. Needs must that what from the earth thou didst receive, that to the earth thou must restore: dust thou art and to dust shalt thou return. Upon what then dost thou pride thyself, thou who must soon be mere rottenness, and a thing hidden out of sight in the ground? What seest thou to yearn after in a world, out of which thou must so soon be cast, trodden under foot of men? Whenever then thou lookest upon the graves of the dead, remember that thou too wilt soon be with them. There — and thou knowest it well — there is the home appointed for every one that liveth. There, laid low together, content with a mere corner of earth, shall the rich man and the poor man share one bed. There gentleman and commoner cannot be known the one from the other, and the strong and the weak are upon the same footing. There the miser's wealth will not profit him; nor will the crafty man be helped by all his cunning. There the epicure will be food for worms, and the fop will stink in the nostrils of the passer-by. There the loftiness of men will be bowed down, and the counsel of the haughty ones will be brought to nought. Remember that nothing mortal can endure for ever, and that man, having corrupted his nature by sin, must needs go back to the slime from which he was taken.
