Miss Frances Williams Wynn is today reproducing two letters to a bereaved young widow in India by Bishop Reginald Heber, who seems to have been best known has a writer of hymns.
Heber seems to be a rather better theological controversist than consoler, however, since he spends most of his time in arcane points, particularly on the state of the soul after death and on the power of prayers for it (on which he is certainly unsound in CofE terms).
But perhaps the most fun is to be had from speculating about the cause of the young husband’s death – “the fatal accident … an instantaneous death without pain, and while engaged in innocent amusement”. Hunting maybe? The bishop would probably have considered that innocent amusement, even if we do not.
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