The following Sunday the church was all but empty. Accordingly, the Pastor placed a notice in the local
newspapers, stating that, because the church was dead, it was everyone's duty to give it a decent
Christian burial. The funeral would be held the following Sunday afternoon, the notice said.
Morbidly curious, a large crowd turned out for the "funeral." In front of the pulpit, they saw a closed
coffin, smothered in flowers. After the Pastor delivered the eulogy, he opened the coffin and invited his
congregation to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.
Filled with curiosity as to what would represent the corpse of a "dead church," all the people eagerly
lined up to look in the coffin. Each "mourner" peeped into the coffin then quickly turned away with a
guilty, sheepish look.
In the coffin, tilted at the correct angle, was a large mirror.