From Necrology to Eulogy? A Preacher memorializes his Father-in-Law

Whether death is a passage or a terminus, an obituary can be an important accompaniment for the survivors. Victorian funerals were improved by sermons setting the deceased in the eye of eternity. Today's funerals prefer eulogies. The Congregational City Temple's Joseph Parker (1830–1902) was second only to the Baptist Metropolitan Tabernacle's Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–92) in popular estimation. Parker's father-in-law, Andrew Common (1815–96), bank manager, chapel deacon and active Liberal, was a type found nationwide. Parker and Common are placed in context, with Parker's commemoration of Common in the Evangelical Magazine as a prime focus for this article, balanced by his earlier extempore graveside appreciation of Common's kinsman Robert Teasdale (1809–83). What might be gleaned about their attitudes to life and death? Were these particular instances representative? Was the piece in the Evangelical Magazine a sermon slipping insensibly into eulogy, the occupational hazard of any preacher at such a moment

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