Mr. Colville Explains

To the Editor of Liberty,

DEAR SIR: — Allow me to inform your readers that, had I thought it objectionable to any of Mrs. Kendrick's real friends, I should not have read any extracts from the Bible at her funeral, as I do not deem reading a necessary part of a funeral service. I am not aware of having used the word of Jesus Christ in the reading, though I quoted the well-known passage from the Apocalypse, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." To me the truth itself is the Lord, and I do believe Mrs. Kendrick died in a love of truth, as her life was for many years a willing sacrifice to the truth as she beheld it. I think your readers ought to know that Mrs. Kendrick and I have been warm personal friends; that she frequently attended by lectures in Berkeley Hall, accompanied by her husband and daughter; and that I spoke at her funeral in compliance with the earnest request of the former. It is also due to me to state that no one of her friends instructed me how to proceed, and I read passages of scripture quite innocently, the very same that I had read recently t the memorial service commemorating the departure from earthly life of a daughter of the late Francis Jackson. On that occasion no exception was taken to the proceeding, and, seeing a number of my dearest friends at Mrs. Kendrick's funerals, I acted independently and unconstrainedly. If I have "outraged her memory and insulted her friends," I can only say that she was a very different woman from the Mrs. Kendricks I had the honor of knowing, and her friends must be persond of very perculiar sensibilities, at least. I wish to awaken no controversy, but an attack ought to be replied to by the one attacked in a journal styling itself Liberty.

Yours for the truth, W. J. COLVILLE.

[Mr. Colville errs in supposing that we criticised him for reading from the Bible. That strange book contains many passages which Mrs. Kendrick, in common with all sensible people, ardently admired, and which might have been read with peculiar propriety at her funeral. It was the character of Mr. Colville's selection that aroused our indignation. The keynote of the services was a sentence not only containing the words Christ Jesus (which Mr. Colville certainly used), but directly inculcating the Christian scheme of salvation, for which Mrs. Kendrick entertained no sentiment save that of the profoundest contempt. As one of her most intimate friends, a spiritualist, has since said to us, "a more inappropriate passage could not have been selected." To show Mr. Colville that we are not averse to quoting scripture properly, we call his attention, in answer to his strained symbolism identifying the truth with the Lord, to the seventeenth verse of the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew: "Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottle perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved." It is true that Mr. Colville had no instructions concerning the service, but for the very reason, we suppose, that his intimate acquaintance with the deceased inspired a confidence that he would say nothing inappropriate. We may have erred in imputing unworthy motives in explanation of his conduct, but we had to choose between impeaching his motives or his good sense. That our criticism was substantially correct we have the amplest proof in the thanks and congratulations thereon that continue to pour in on us from Mrs. Kendrick's dearest friends present at the funeral. — EDITOR LIBERTY.]