Burial alive

“ Does not the eye, which cannot see itself, see all in Thee? May this faith endure in us! Thee we now gratefully, reverently bless; as Thou disclosest unto us the mystery of death: "Death is the Heart of Life!" Every cemetery, every burial-place, every cremation-ground is a standing reminder of Thy proclamation that the fleeting breath of man is necessarily and even beneficently destined to fail, but the enduring, the abiding, the imperishable, God-inbreathed spirit is wafted onward and upward, homeward and heavenward. Thee we shall not shun, but shall wait on and trust in unto the very end. ”

“ At your death-bed how boldly might we comfort and encourage your departing souls! And at your burial, how comfortably might we leave you in the grave, in expectation to meet your souls in heaven, and to see your bodies raised to that glory! ”

“ Now I can but wish for that which once was mine; that which every man blessed of God ought to have at death; that which I saw in that awful moment in the ancient burial ground when I raised the lid on the coffin—my own shrunken, decayed, and headless body. ”

“ Oh for the death-bed where the last whisper is breathed into the ear of those who love us best! Oh for the quiet burial in the country churchyard, where the grass grows rank over the graves, and the lark builds her nest low among its tufted richness! ”

“ A lucky place and day have then to be fixed, by fortune-tellers, for the burial, and should these not be forthcoming, the coffin would be placed on a hill till they can be found. Burial is considered of so much importance, that should a man be drowned his spirit would be called back into a figure of wood or paper, and buried with pomp. Before the grave-diggers begin their work, members of the family worship the genii of the mountain, and write letters to these gods, asking them to be so kind as to allow the funeral to take place. ”

“ It is singular that a funeral consequent on an unusual death should be attended by greater numbers than an ordinary one. On this occasion, I may safely say, that my little retired burial-ground, and its immediate vicinity, were occupied by thousands. ”

“ And make Love a burial-place.
He is dead, dear, as you see,
And he wearies you and me.
Growing heavier, day by day,
Let us bury him, I say.
Wings of dead white butterflies,
These shall shroud him, as he lies
In his casket rich and rare,
Made of finest maiden-hair. ”

“ I reflected on many a country walk in England, culminating in a visit to an old church and graveyard, and the tracing of the names and dates of people long since passed away. It is somewhat strange. When we are in an old graveyard and looking at the graves of people who have died centuries ago we feel, instead of grief, a sort of quiet satisfaction, and that even when those whose burial is recorded are of our own name and family. We dare not even contrast our feeling with the poignancy that is attached to a new grave—with its garish stone, fresh clods, and wilted flowers. ”

“ I know not what dear departed form, whose grave is already sunk as deep as itself, I may not, like a dream, raise up on its burial place and show anew to your tearful eyes, and of how many dead a single grave may be the reminder. ”

“ Our burial places abound in mortuary horrors which, with clumsy fingers, point in the assumed direction of immortality, inspiring hope in a future life by the thought that it, at worst, cannot contain ugliness to equal their own. ”

“ The objects of interest lying about the funeral pyres and burial mounds of the human race in its long, long march are so many and so full of interest that one knows not where or when to stop. There is the burial at sea—the most solemn of all—when upon the mighty ocean the little group gathers round the captain, and he commits the body to the waters until that day when "the sea shall give up her dead." There are the rare forms of funeral ceremonies; for, although the chief are those I have mentioned—earth-burial, burning, and embalming—yet these are not all. ”

“ Concerning Burial of the Dead, all customs of praying, reading, and singing, both in going to or from the grave, are said to have been greatly abused. The simple direction is therefore given, that when any person departeth this life, let the body upon the day of burial be decently attended from the house to the place appointed for public burial, and there immediately interred without any ceremony. ”

“ When all is ready for the burial, the ‘undertakers’ fasten the body in its mat shroud to a long bamboo pole, and so carry it between them on their shoulders. The nearest relative does not as a rule go to the funeral, nor any one under age—i.e. ”

“ Most powerful of all in its favor is the prevention of premature burial. All these are on the side of cremation, and against it is but one—sentiment. It seems more beautiful to lay our friends to rest, softly pillowed, shrouded in satin, inclosed in rose-wood, covered with flowers, and of anything beyond we refuse to think. We erect the imposing marble, set out the blossoming plant, and carry flowers to the spot. The cemetery appeals more strongly to the sentiment than does the crematory. ”

“ Nothing equals the care which they take in the burial of their dead. As soon as a native has breathed his last, the neighbours are informed, and immediately all the women come to weep about the corpse. ”

“ What happens in our graves poisons our thoughts together with our bodies. The figure of death, in the imagination of men, depends before all upon the form of burial; and the funeral rites govern not only the fate of those who depart but also the happiness of those who stay, for they raise in the ultimate background of life the great image upon which men’s eyes linger in consolation or despair. ”

“ Death is sufficiently terrible in itself, and the grave in its best form has enough of horror to make the stoutest heart quail at the thought, but nothing I have seen or read of can equal the Campo Santo for the most loathsome and disgusting mode of burial. ”

“ Wherefore all these last offices and ceremonies that concern the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the dead. If a costly burial does any good to a wicked man, a squalid burial, or none at all, may harm the godly. ”

“ On the burial of any notorious character,—of a suicide, of a man who has perished by manslaughter, of a woman who has died in child-birth, or even of a child who has been killed by being run over in the street, this vulgar excitement rises to an insufferable height. If, in such a case, the corpse is brought into my church, this sacred and beautiful structure is desecrated and disfigured by the hurried intrusion of a squalid and irreverent mob, and clergyman, corpse, and mourners are jostled and mixed up with the confused mass, by the uncontrollable pressure from without. ”

“ Seldom, if ever, does the voice of prayer rise over their bier under these circumstances; in silence the corpse is committed to its rude burial, while now and then a half-suppressed sigh is heard, and the unbidden tears steal down the sunburned cheeks of his manly associates. ”

“ It is wonderful to hear the sick, long before they die, give directions, or express desires, respecting their burial. So far from thinking of the grave as a melancholy place, no doubt the departed spirit will often think of it in the separate state with pleasure, as the place where it is hereafter to receive a form like Christ's; and the thought of resurrection adds greatly to the joys of heaven. ”

“ The burial train glides slowly before us, as we have seen it represented in the woodcuts of that day, the coffin, and the bearers, and the lamentable friends, trailing their long black garments, while grim Death, a most misshapen skeleton, with all kinds of doleful emblems, stalks hideously in front. ”

“ He had never seen a dead man or woman and he was unfamiliar with the rites of burial. He knew, indeed, that people die before they grow old, that children die, but until that moment, death had not become a personal thing, a thing that might descend on him.... ”

“ No man could seek a lordlier burial. It was the death he had always craved. From murder, fire, and sudden death, why should we call on the Lord to deliver us? A broken neck in a hunting-field, a slip on rocky mountains, a wounded animal at bay—such was the environment of death for which he had ever prayed. ”

“ As cremation gradually superseded burial, the idea took shape that the soul might have an existence of its own, altogether independent of the body, and a place of abode was assigned to it in a hole in the centre of the earth, where it lived on in eternity with other souls. ”

“ But I pray the Lord to have mercy on my soul, beseeching my Redeemer from this day to the last to strengthen my hands to fight, and to deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.
Should it please my Heavenly Father to let mo die in the bosom of my family, then a pine coffin, a plain funeral, and u simple burial, with an evergreen to mark the spot, will constitute the burial, the tomb and the epitaph, that under the circumstances, are most grateful to me. ”

“ CREMATION OF THE DEAD. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Cremation of the dead is neither new in theory nor in practice. In the England of modern times, however, the question has only recently assumed recognised importance. And the more one considers cremation, the more one finds himself wondering how it has come to pass that we practise burial, with its many faults, and do not burn our dead. Thousands amongst us are now beginning to feel thankful that the dead are soon to 'rule our spirits from their urns' in a realistic and not alone in a poetical sense. ”

“ This is the habit of mankind; but I know of rare ones, both men and women, who never allow dead flowers to be thrown into the draught, but always give them decent burial, either cremation or earth to earth. ”

“ A few weeks afterwards the poor woman’s soul took its flight, I confidently hope, and solemnly believe, to a place of eternal happiness and rest. I performed the burial service over her remains. She lies in our little churchyard. There is no stone at her grave’s head. ”

“ The lamentations over, the mourner retires, doffs the mourning robes, and eats his food. At the new and the full moon, all the relatives are invited and expected to assist at the ceremonies. These practices continue more or less even after burial, and at intervals during several years. Often a noble will go out to weep and kneel at the tomb, passing a day, and even a night, in this position. ”

“ As the Malayālis believe that disposal of a corpse by cremation or burial as soon as possible after death is conducive to the happiness of the spirit of the departed, no time is lost in setting about the funeral. ”

“ When a death occurs, a body is hurried to the grave as soon as possible, for the soul is always in torment, it is believed, between the death and burial. Little parcels of food are laid in holes by the side of the grave, and large headstones are always erected, stones on which the angels Nebir and Munkir sit to judge the souls of the dead. We saw many touching little funerals—young girls being carried to the grave without any coffin or shroud. ”

“ In burial customs, with their numerous little superstitious observances, the survival of folk-memory is well displayed. It is needless to repeat the evidence here—how, in recent years, objects have been surreptitiously, and even openly, buried with the dead; how the funeral feast, in an attenuated form, lingers on; how we still scrupulously don the funeral garb, once the sign of deprecation or fear; how graveyard teeth are used as charms and remedies. ”

“ Only the underlying idea is the same,—that the burial of the dead is a pious act and a sacred duty, which will meet a fitting reward.5 This belief is so widespread and ancient that it is not difficult to surmise how stories inculcating the duty might have grown up independently in many lands. ”

“ Do you not understand that the functions belonging to the day and the night have been separated more than all other things? With good reason, therefore, has burial been taken out of the day and would be reserved for the night. ”

“ What more natural than that every one should desire his death and burial to be, as it were, typical of the ideas which he agreed to accept during life: what other purpose is served by the consecration of plots of ground and the erection of crosses? ”

“ The earth is the mother of mankind, and the producer of the fruits and other things on which we live, and the burial of the dead would be a defilement and an injury. Cemeteries are everywhere considered unhealthy, and our mode of sepulture is open to none of the objections that are made to cremation or burial. ”

“ We must ask you to go down with his body into the grave.’ ‘Burial of the living with the dead,’ replied Tzŭ-hêng, ‘is not in accordance with established rites. Still, as you say some one is wanted to attend upon the deceased, who better fitted than his wife and secretary? ”

“ It would be supremely foolish to object to the burning of the dead on the score of its being completely a heathen practice, and as if burial in the ground was not at one time open to the same objection. ”

“ Sometimes I imagined myself buried alive: methought I had fallen into seeming death, and my friends had consigned me to the tomb, from which a resurrection was impossible:—that in such a case my limbs would have been confined to a coffin, and my coffin to a grave, and that I should instantly have been suffocated, did not occur to destroy my supposition; neither did this supposition overwhelm me with terror, or prompt my efforts to deliverance: my state was full of tumult and confusion, and my attention was incessantly divided between my painful sensations and my feverish dreams. ”