A DISCOURSE 
DELIVERED AT THE FUNERAL 
OF 
JAMES COUPER, M. D., 
AT NEW CASTLE, DELAWARE, 
On Thursday, August 17, 1865. 
BY 
GEORGE BURROAVES, D.D. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
COLLINS, PRINTER, T05 JAYNE STREET. 
1865. DISCOURSE. 
Caught up into Paradise.-II. Corinthians 12: 4. 
Friends, brethren and companions in tribulation, and 
in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ-As we 
have here gathered to walk with a dearly beloved 
friend, far as human footsteps are permitted to go, down 
into the valley of the shadow of death, and there bid 
him, so far as relates to earth, a final adieu; let us lift 
our eyes, red with weeping, away from the dark shadows 
and chill dews of the grave in which he disappears from 
view, and look upwards to that world of glory into 
which he has already emerged to " shine as a star and 
as the brightness of the firmament forever and ever." 
As we stand here weeping, we hear a voice, not in- 
deed like that addressed to the disciples gazing after 
"Jesus our elder brother, the first begotten from the 
dead," as he was ascending to his father and our father, 
to his God and our God; but a voice like the great 
voice heard from heaven in the apocalyptic vision, say- 
ing to our weeping spirits-" Caught up into Paradise." 
He has been caught up into heaven as a distinct 
place. St. Paul says that himself was caught up into 
heaven. But for guarding against the error of looking 
on heaven as a state merely, and not a place, he repeats 4 
that lie was caught up into Paradise-into heaven as 
distinctly a locality as Eden was a locality on earth. It 
is the same place of which Jesus spake to the penitent 
on the cross, "Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise." Luke 23: 43. It is called 
paradise for showing that the souls of departed saints 
are in a place where they enjoy a perfection of blessed- 
ness and a manifestation of the glory and presence of 
God, which can find its only representation to human 
minds in the paradise where our first parents dwelt, 
before the entrance of sin, under the cloud of light, the 
brightness of the Father's glory. 
The saints are caught up to this glory. They go up 
to this place as the prophet went up in the chariot and 
horses of fire. We lose much by thinking these facts 
of the Scriptures are miraculous and can never be re- 
peated now. The material form of the thing may never 
be repeated to mortal eyes; but the spiritual truth that 
material fact was intended to teach, may be, and must 
be, constantly repeated. The types have ceased; the 
divine truth embodied in those types lives and abides 
forever in the history and experience of the saints in 
every age. The fact of the translation of Elijah, like 
the types, is a representation to the human senses, of a 
glorious truth which is realized in the death of every 
believer. The soul of every dying saint finds waiting 
for his conveyance to Paradise that which is to the dis- 
embodied soul what the chariot of fire was to the body 
of the ascending prophet. How generally in thinking 
of death, are we apt to feel with the servant of the pro- 
phet, "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" But when 5 
the Lord opens our eyes at death, we shall be as when 
" the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he 
saw: and, behold, the mountain full of horses and 
chariots of fire round about Elisha." 2 Ki. 6:17. The 
ministry of angels runs through the whole of the Scrip- 
tures. The angels were with Jesus from Bethlehem to 
Gethsemane and his resurrection. The beggar died 
and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. 
"The angel of the Lord-the angelic soldiery of the 
living God-encampeth round about them that fear 
him; and delivereth them." Ps. 34 : 7. 
Now, therefore, the death of the saints is no accident. 
They are sent for, caught up. There has been no night 
when there has not been a guard of angels around this 
Christian home. But could our eyes have been opened 
on the night before the last Sabbath, we must have 
seen, not a falling star, but the chariot and horses of 
fire falling from heaven and stopping at this threshold. 
In addition to the ordinary picket guard of angels 
stationed here, we would have seen a battalion of this 
soldiery of heaven in their armor of light, the escort 
ordinarily detailed for a prince of the kingdom, waiting 
for the coming out of this heir of heaven, this king and 
priest unto God, from the walls of this earthly house of 
his tabernacle. There stood they waiting in quietness, 
when, faithful as a good servant in duty to the last, he 
came in wearied from his last professional call, and 
closed the duties of a laborious life, as a priest of his 
household by the evening sacrifice of prayer at the 
altar of his loved and peaceful home. There stood that 
escort of angels waiting; there stood Jesus; but the 6 
eyes of our friend, like the eyes of the disciples of old, 
were holden that he should not see them. The words 
describing the prophet's translation are well nigh a 
description of his own. With friends beloved he 
talked almost to the last. "And it came to pass as 
they still went on and talked, that, behold, a chariot of 
fire and horses of fire, and parted them asunder; and 
he went up into heaven." 2 Ki. 2:11. Calm in the 
blessed peace of his father's God, he laid his weary 
head on his pillow; but ere sleep had sealed his senses, 
-unheard by mortal ears, a trumpet blown by angel 
lips sounded at his door. Like a good soldier sleeping 
on his armor, he knew the sound and sprang to meet 
the summons. But this time the master had called not 
to a midnight pilgrimage of mercy to some sick-bed of 
the poor; but to enter as a prince and conqueror the 
chariot of fire; to be caught up into paradise; to meet 
the blessing, "Weil done, good and faithful servant; 
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Matt. 25 : 23. 
When the Sabbath dawned- 
" There, in the twilight cold and gray, 
Lifeless, calm as in sleep, he lay; 
But from the sky serene and far, 
A voice came like a falling star- 
Excelsior 1" with Jesus ! 
Thus caught up into Paradise, he is present with Jesus. 
Absent from the body, we are present with the Lord. 
We are thus caught up in order that we may be with 
Jesus. For such the prayer is offered in heaven- 
"Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given 
me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my 7 
glory." Jno. 17 : 24. The road of light along which 
that escort around this chariot of fire passed away to 
heaven, was, 
"The way the holy prophets went, 
The road that leads from banishment, 
The King's highway of holiness." 
It was the same highway travelled by Jesus with the 
penitent thief from Calvary; the same travelled in 
every age by apostles and saints; the same along 
which nearly six and twenty years ago, his own father 
in whose footsteps this beloved son followed so faith- 
fully to the last, passed away to glory. It was that 
new and living way opened for us into the holiest by 
the blood of Jesus; the highway, "The way of holiness," 
along which "the ransomed of the Lord shall return and 
come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their 
heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow 
and sighing shall flee away." 
Thus caught up to Jesus in paradise, they are in per- 
fect blessedness. "Thou wilt show me the path of life: 
in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand 
there are pleasures for evermore." Ps. 16 : 11. If some 
traveller returned from the ends of the earth should 
bring word that the old original Paradise in Eden had 
been discovered, how thrilling would be the tidings. 
Better still, if a path of light were found by which it 
could be reached on some green isle of a tropic summer 
sea, and we could enter its gates no longer guarded by 
cherubim and flaming sword, there to enjoy a heritage, 
a home on its evergreen meadows, its sunny hills, and 
gather with our own hands the living fruits of an im- 8 
mortal health and undying youth from the boughs of 
the tree of life. And if we had a friend so happy as to 
reach that heritage, would we, could we, ever be so self- 
ish as to wish him to leave it and return to the cold 
realities and withering sorrows of this outer world'? No: 
no. Never: never. But the same heavenly herald that 
came with the summons for our departed friend, has left 
for our consolation these words written by the finger of 
God-"To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of 
the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of 
God." Rev. 2 : 7. Whatever may be the precise state 
of things in heaven, it is enough for us to know that 
the departed saints are enjoying a blessedness transcend- 
ing that of the paradise in Eden, and which can be best 
illustrated by the joys of that earthly paradise. 
Being caught up to be thus with Jesus, they there 
abide with Him, like the penitent thief from the cross, 
and return with their King to receive their bodies again 
in the resurrection. Enoch was translated for showing 
that the bodies no less than the souls of men shall reach 
heaven. To this testimony in the patriarchal age, was 
added that of the translation of Elijah under the Mosaic 
dispensation. Under the gospel, for continuing unbroken 
the line of testimony, through the different dispensations, 
to this crowning truth of our redemption, St. Paul was 
caught up into Paradise for seeing that the bodies of 
the redeemed reach heaven; that the body of Jesus is 
there, and the bodies of the translated few as the first 
fruits of redemption completed. From this personal 
view, he was able to speak with even greater confidence 
in the triumphant testimony he bears in the fifteenth 9 
chapter of First Corinthians to the truth of the resur- 
rection from the dead. Nature did not first teach this 
truth; but nature is full of utterances and characters 
which this truth alone enables us to interpret. To the 
resurrection of the body are we pointed every morning 
on awaking from sleep. Even amid the gloom of 
heathenism, reason saw the analogy between death and 
sleep. Homer says- 
" She speeds to Lemnos o'er the rolling deep, 
And seeks the cave of Death's half-brother, Sleep." 
How beautiful the confirmation of this doctrine, by the 
spring whose thousand voices proclaim from every hill- 
top, and from every valley, and from every cloud in 
rainbow hues, "Thy brother shall rise again;" by the 
flowers, themselves raised by almighty power from the 
dead, whose breath of fragrance repeats, and whose tiny 
bells ring out in silver-peals pure as those in Paradise, 
the utterance first heard on Judea's hills, "I am the 
resurrection and the life." These sweet-toned heralds, 
angels in the material drapery of earth, does the 
redeeming creator send forth year by year into every 
flowery valley and every blossoming tree to confirm to 
us by their analogical testimony this glorious truth, 
disclosed to us by revelation, demonstrated by the logic 
of St. Paul an eye-witness to its reality in Paradise, 
and overwhelmingly confirmed to us by example in the 
resurrection of Jesus from the dead. O this cold clay, 
this is not the last of our loved and cherished friend. 
This mouldering dust is but the germinal elements 
from which shall spring at the word of Him who 
brought the brother of Mary and Martha from the dead, 10 
a glorious body like unto the body borne by Jesus in 
glory, in the midst of the throne, crowned with many 
crowns, the last and richest of them all his crown of 
triumph over death and the grave. By the arm of 
Jesus has the soul of this departed saint been caught 
up from the toils, and weariness, and infirmities, and 
cares, and sorrows of earth, to the bosom of Jesus, a 
star on the breast of that kingly conqueror, there to 
await the return of Jesus to earth for completing our 
redemption by the resurrection of our bodies from the 
grave. 
Who then can misunderstand me when I say, that 
amid our tears we have ground for rejoicing. We 
bless our father's God for such a gift as that of our 
departed friend, in whom was embodied such loveliness, 
such excellence, such usefulness. Instead of murmur- 
ing now at the recall of this precious legacy, we thank 
the Father of mercies that it was so long continued. 
We pour out our souls in thankfulness amid our tears, 
for the grace of the Holy Spirit who made this good 
man what he was; and made us so long partakers of 
the benefits of his labors, the riches of his example, and 
the preciousness of his friendship. Why should I 
here, amid the friends of his childhood; among those 
who for more than forty years have been witnesses of 
his daily professional life; among those who during 
nearly a quarter of a century, must have so often 
thought of Enoch, as you beheld his quiet and consistent 
walk with God;-why should I, in such a gathering, 
stop to dwell on his character'? To those who had not 
the happiness to know him, the words of truth and 11 
affection might seem overdrawn; while to those who 
have so long felt the power of his goodness and love, 
the same words may seem tame and below the truth. 
Under the effects of a blow so sudden and stunning, the 
heart and hand of friendship fail in such an office. 
He possessed all the elements which nature and cul- 
tivation combine to blend in the man of gentleness and 
refinement. He was a man of the most delicate sensi- 
bility, the most scrupulous justice, and the most refined 
sense of honor. So exquisitely was his nature attem- 
pered to all that is pure, and lovely, and honorable, and 
of good report, that he shrank from the very shadow of 
wrong, from the very breath of untruth; and this deli- 
cacy of sensibility, while making him a man of pure 
elevation and the finest character, was the cause of 
much suffering in a world of such rough antagonism 
and unscrupulous policy. Judging others with justice 
and gentleness, he felt proportionally the ungenerous 
judgments of natures of a rougher and more selfish 
mould. His whole standard of duty and honor was not 
indeed too high for justice and truth, but too high for 
the peace of a sensitive nature in such a callous world. 
He embraced in the word honor, not merely the few 
ragged elementary principles adopted by the irreligious 
world into their code; but gathering up these as simple 
primary elements, he blended them with the full 
finished teaching and morality of the honor that cometh 
from God. His was an honor refined and exalted by 
the truth and spirit of holiness. His conscience was 
sensitive to the most delicate shades of right and wrong; 
equally keen in its discriminations and judgments; 12 
gently firm and unsparing of self in its decisions; and 
inflexibly unyielding in carrying out its determinations. 
No task-master's eye, no stimulus from public sentiment, 
no goading from personal pride and vanity, was ever 
needed for keeping him faithful to duty. In him, con- 
science sensitive, refined, and enlightened, had control 
supreme. And thus instructed, his conscience embraced 
in its grasp, judged, and urged to the performance of, 
the whole compass of duties incumbent on the well 
balanced man. This inward moral power guiding, con- 
trolling, and prompting, made him a man of public spirit 
in all things relating to the good of his neighborhood 
and his native State; made him a pure, right-minded, 
unswerving patriot; and kept in healthful, judicious, 
vigorous exercise his large natural benevolence, which 
with a conscience less clear and penetrating in its 
apprehensions, and less strong in its controlling power, 
must have made him a man of immeasurably fewer and 
less valuable works of charity and mercy. He had a 
natural love for benevolence from the pleasure enjoyed 
in its exercise. He never sent the needy empty away, 
even when self-sacrificing effort was necessary for their 
relief. 
His Christian character followed the law of our being 
in taking its coloring from the peculiarities of his natu- 
ral disposition. In him, nature, education, and culture 
had laid a noble foundation for the development of 
grace. Two and twenty years ago, the Holy Spirit 
made him feel that he needed more than his spotless 
morality and blameless life to fit him for Heaven. He 
had hitherto been to his friends a living commentary 13 
on the young man whom Jesus loved, though con- 
strained to say to him, " One thing thou lackest." He 
hearkened to this divine utterance in his soul; and 
instead of turning away sorrowful, took up his cross 
and followed his Lord. He kept back no part of the 
price; he brought his all and laid it at the feet of Jesus. 
On a character of such moral excellence, the hand of 
his Redeemer placed the gift of holiness through atoning 
blood, as "a crown of pure gold on his head." In lay- 
ing the foundations of his religious life, he digged deep, 
and built upon the rock of ages. Quiet, calm, arid con- 
scientious, with his heart broken by the sense of sin, 
and his eye filled with contrition's tear, as we were 
thrown together as friends, he took my hand and asked 
me of Jesus. The scene is still fresh in my memory, 
as though it were yesterday. I never expect to meet a 
case of repenting manhood, more interesting and beau- 
tiful. While thus he inquired, there was not the earth- 
quake, not the fire; it was the still small voice; and 
when he heard, like the prophet veiling himself with his 
mantle, he covered his face in contrition at his Saviour's 
feet, and felt spoken to his soul the words, "Thy sins 
are forgiven thee." Thus in Christ Jesus, he was a 
new creature. All the native excellences of his charac- 
ter were refined and beautified by Heavenly grace; like 
a transparency or alabaster vase lighted up within, his 
soul showed its former features invested with new love- 
liness. 
He held the faith "in simplicity and Godly sincerity." 
He was "an Israelite in whom there was no guile." 
Well balanced as were his powers, he showed the effect 14 
of pious parents and pious education in the clearness, 
harmony, and consistency of his views of religious truth 
and duty. He was not a pious monstrosity with a 
religious affection- or two of gigantic development on a 
spiritual constitution otherwise shrivelled and dwarfed. 
He was a symmetrical Christian. He was of meek and 
lowly mind; a man of steady and consistent religious 
principle. He was not a man who talked much of his 
religious affections, though delighting to sit humbly as 
a learner at the feet of those having a deeper spiritual 
experience. He was not emotional and demonstrative 
in words. His religious affections, deep and earnest, 
were shown rather by calm, quiet action, by embodying 
in duty the principle, "If ye love me, keep my com- 
mandments." Jno. 14: 15. He was not above the 
frailties of humanity. He was a man of like passions 
with ourselves. He had to struggle with the infirmities 
of nature within, and the trials-fiery trials to a nature 
so sensitive as his-to which the child of God is subject 
from without. He knew from bitter experience, what 
it meant by crucifixion to the world. Yet few Christians 
have passed through this fiery process, and found so 
seldom as he, the weakness of nature to give way. In 
the words of Great-heart, in the Pilgrim's Progress- 
"We will leave the good man, he is at rest, he also had 
a brave victory over his enemy: let Him grant that 
dwelleth above, that we fare not worse when we come 
to be tried, than he." 
Shrinking instinctively from seeming to be what he 
was not in reality, and coming to the duties of religion 
with his natural conscientiousness made more sensitive 15 
by divine grace, he strove to walk in all the command- 
ments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. He would 
assume no responsibility which careful examination and 
prayer did not satisfy him he was capable of performing 
up to the requirements of his own elevated standard. 
The fact of his undertaking any duty was a guarantee 
it would be faithfully performed. He embraced in his 
feelings, efforts, and charities, all the benevolent opera- 
tions of the church; and gave to them liberally accord- 
ing to his means. He was ready not only for every good 
work, but for devising liberal things. He was given to 
hospitality; and made the ministers of Jesus feel his 
house a home. He consecrated a due portion of his 
income to the Lord. No one thing lay nearer to his 
heart than that apostolic test of healthful piety, the 
cause of missions. He had hardly a purer earthly hap- 
piness than in adding to his information and increasing 
his interest in this apostolic work, by the grand testi- 
monials borne thereto by one who had taken advantage 
of his position as a public man to know the whole 
truth from personal observation in heathen lands, to 
vindicate this cause at home, and to encourage its 
missionaries abroad; one whom he loved and mourned 
as a brother; from whom death separated him only a 
few short weeks; one whose memory we all love to 
cherish and honor; who must ever stand among the 
noblest of our patriots, among the foremost of our great 
naval commanders, among the purest and most accom- 
plished of our public men-best of all, a true and hum- 
ble Christian-the gallant, the great, the good Dupont. 
Attached to his own church by preference, convic- 16 
tion, and education, with the liberality inseparable 
from all elevated and noble souls taught by the Spirit 
of God, he was glad to feel that the members of the 
true invisible fold of Christ are not confined to'his own 
denomination, and hail as brother all, wherever found, 
in whom he could trace the features of his adored Lord. 
Intelligence, steadiness, consistency, liberality-all fused 
and enlivened by love to Jesus-were prominent in his 
Christian life. Some persons have a piety-like the 
mountain torrent, at times overflowing from the passing 
shower, more frequently dry, dusty, desolate-now, 
sweeping and fiery in the denunciations of their dis- 
tempered zeal; now, fallen away even behind the 
moralities of the world. His piety was "the still 
stream that waters fairest meadows," constant, gentle, 
full, fed from perennial springs beyond the reach of 
•earth's surrounding droughts, "the Holy Spirit within 
his soul as a fountain of water springing up into eternal 
life." His piety was not like the empty flashes on a 
summer evening from the bosom of a cloud otherwise 
habitually in gloom. It was the vestal flame of old, 
kindled from heaven, faithfully tended, and ever burn- 
ing constant, steady, and pure. Thus calm and clear 
did the current of his affections flow on deepening 
toward Heaven, until at last, when over his soul did 
the day break and the shadows flee away, his peace was 
found as a river and his righteousness as the waves of 
the sea. To the last did the love of Jesus leaven and 
quicken all his duties; to the last, was he "not slothful 
in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Rom. 
12: 11. His last return from duty was less than two 17 
hours before lie was caught up into Paradise. "Blessed 
is that servant whom his Lord when he cometh, shall 
find so doing." Matt. 24: 46. 
" Servant of God, well done 1 
Rest from thy loved employ: 
The battle fought, the victory won, 
Enter thy Master's joy. 
" The cry at midnight came ; 
.He started up to hear : 
A mortal arrow pierced his frame; 
He fell, but felt no fear. 
" His spirit with a bound, 
Left its encumbering clay: 
His tent, at sunrise, on the ground 
A darkened ruin lay." 
I have not time to do more than allude to him as a 
physician. None but a person of piety and a physician 
can do justice to his professional character. He was 
an active practitioner of medicine for more than one 
and forty years. He possessed the finest endowments 
for the profession which he adorned. His natural deli- 
cacy, his almost womanly modesty, his gentleness, his 
soothing voice, even his noiseless footstep, his delicate 
touch of the pulse; his quiet, earnest sympathy; his 
quick, instinctive, discriminating apprehension of dis- 
ease from its earliest, slightest indications; his gentle 
tact in getting, without annoyance to the delicacy of the 
patient, the needed knowledge of symptoms and ailment; 
his cool, correct conclusions drawn from this knowledge 
often insufficient and perplexing-all pointed him out 
as a man rarely fitted for the sick-room and its ministra- 
tions of mercy. Other physicians who may possess a 18 
measure of these endowments, are seldom found with 
that which in him gave all these things their crowning 
worth, and imparted to his qualifications an excellence 
seldom seen, the presence of that Spirit of "wisdom 
which is from above, pure, peaceable, gentle, full of 
mercy." James 3 : 17. He was an ornament to the 
medical profession; he was an ornament to the Christian 
church. He was a physician of high and rare endow- 
ments refined and elevated by true religion. Such men 
ennoble our humanity amid all its common frailties; 
and in their character, mankind may feel an honorable 
pride. 
He took a deep interest and pride in all that affected 
the honor and advancement of his profession. He was 
a member of the Convention which formed the National 
Medical Association ; was chairman of the committee on 
medical education; and continued a member of the 
Association, useful and diligent, till his death. He 
had by nature and by culture the qualifications which, 
in a field where his talents could have had wider scope, 
would have placed him among the most prominent men 
of his calling. Few men combine, as did himself, the 
high qualities of the refined gentleman, the cultivated 
physician, and the humble Christian. In his case, the 
prophet was not without honor in his own country. 
Let the households saved from bereavement; the pain 
alleviated, the sorrow assuaged, the precious lives saved 
from death, by his skill; the many poor on whom his 
labors were lavished without money and without price; 
the consternation felt in this community at the tidings 
of his death-let these things tell his skill, his faithful- 19 
ness, his worth as a physician. When his skill failed 
in arresting disease, what other member of his profes- 
sion succeeded'? He not only attended with conscien- 
tious faithfulness, but studied with sleepless interest, 
doubtful and difficult cases. He was a model man; he 
was a model physician; he was a model Christian. The 
band of professional brethren here gathered around him 
to carry him gently to his last resting-place, in heart- 
felt sorrow; the Christian friends come from distant 
homes to follow him, in the silence of grief, to his sud- 
den tomb; the poor and the aged who come with weep- 
ing eyes and tottering steps to take a last look of the 
loved and honored dead-these show the hold he has 
taken on those who knew him and were capable of 
appreciating his worth. 
"When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, 
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, 
Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load 
Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever. 
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavor, 
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod ; 
But where Faith pointed with her golden rod, 
Followed thee up to joy and bliss forever. 
Love led them on, and Faith which knew them best, 
Thy handmaids, clothed them o'er with purple beams 
And azure wings, that up they flew thus dressed, 
And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes 
Before the Judge, who thenceforth bade thee rest, 
And drink thy fill of pure, immortal streams." 
Here, as the last words, may private feeling so far 
find utterance, as to thank our Father in heaven, that 
one who enjoyed, during nearly a quarter of a century, 
his confidence and friendship, has been brought by an 20 
unseen hand, on a pilgrimage from the ends of the 
earth, to bear this testimony of truth, and lay this 
broken chain, this wreath of affection, wetTwith many 
tears, on his grave.