Exhumation

“ I have seen the coroner and made out a list of witnesses. You are one of them, of course; in fact, you are the star witness. You were the last person to see her alive, and you were present at the exhumation. Dr. Baines—he's rather a scientific gentleman—is to make the post-mortem examination, and tell us the cause of death, if he can. He won't have much to go on. The lime has eaten up everything—it would, naturally, after three months—but the bones look quite uninjured, so far as I could judge."
"When does the inquest open?" ”

“ My dear brothers and sisters, in accordance with our usual custom, we visit to-day our beautiful cemetery, not to mourn for our dead, but to rejoice that our Lord has risen from the grave to give us eternal life; for with Him shall rise all those who follow in His holy footsteps here below. Therefore, as we put not on the garb of mourning, let us not grieve in our hearts when we think of our loved ones who have gone home before us, but clasp each other's hands and be glad together, that through the blessed Redeemer such happiness has been vouchsafed to them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The one buried that day I had known, or she had known me in my boyhood, and it was expected that I would attend. My mother sent the wreath that belongs,—there is both sense and sentiment in flowers at a funeral when they are wreathed by the hands of those who loved the dead, as is still the custom here; none where they are bought at a florist's and paid for with a growl,—and we stood around the coffin and sang the old hymns, then walked behind it, two by two, men and women, to the grave, singing as we passed through the gate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When all is over, when the absolving benediction has been pronounced, and death has triumphed where life took its last stand, the pale pulseless form, wrapped in its most costly vest, is dressed for burial. Wild-flowers are strewn on the dead by the Indian maiden, while the cliffs around mournfully echo back the funeral dirge. How true is human instinct to the awful mystery of the grave! ”

“ Every one knows the soul-subduing pathos of the funeral service, for who is so fortunate as never to have followed some one he has loved to the tomb? But when performed over the remains of innocence and beauty, thus laid low in the bloom of existence, what can be more affecting? At that simple but most solemn consignment of the body to the grave-“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”—the tears of the youthful companions of the deceased flowed unrestrained. ”

“ A dead body is shunned. Therefore, a shroud is prepared, and other paraphernalia of burial, in order that the survivors may cease to loathe. At death, there is a sacrifice of wine and meat; when the funeral cortege is about to start, there is another; and after burial there is yet another. Yet no one ever saw the spirit of the departed come to taste of the food.
“These have been our customs from remote antiquity. They have not been discarded, because, in consequence, men no more shun the dead. What you may censure in those who perform the ceremonial is no blemish in the ceremonial itself.” ”

“ If the guardians of consecrated sepulchres, in which people have paid an honest fee to be buried, are to dig them up and cart them off as in England, or make a show of them as here, why, I can only say that cremation will gain a good many converts. Any one would prefer urn burial to the chance of being thus made a spectacle. So good, too, it must be for the rising population to take off the edge of any salutary horror they may feel at death and decay, or of reverence for the dead. ”

“ On reaching the grave some religious ceremonies are performed, large quantities of silvered and gilt paper, and imitations of clothes, ships, etc., are burned, this being the readiest way of supplying the wants of the deceased, and forwarding his luggage to the spirit-land. The provisions furnish forth a feast, the coffin is interred, and the ancestral tablet borne back to the ancestral hall, where we will leave it, until the return of the period for the worship of the dead leads us back to the now closing grave.—Temple Bar. ”

“ What tho’ other Ceremonies be perform’d with the greatest Splendor and Exactness, they can give no other Satisfaction than the Decency of Burial, or performing perhaps the Will of the Dead; for the Body will nevertheless stink, corrupt, and it may be startle the nearest Friend to see it a while after? Then shall his Bones not be known, nor his Ashes be distinguish’d from another Mans, nay even from common Earth, so that the parcimonious Heir may well reflect, how vain and needless it would have been to have bestow’d more than a decent Expence on his Funeral. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a great religious ceremony, this burial today. The exaltation of the nameless bones would not be possible except for Belief. Where were Duty and Honor, the well-springs of Victory, if mankind feared that death drew a black curtain behind which lay nothing but the dark? ”

“ If a prominent citizen died, he never failed to attend the funeral, and, where possible, to join the procession on the way to the cemetery. He would stand by the grave with bowed head, and take in every word of the funeral discourse. ”

“ If we reflect, however, on the reasons for our own funeral observances, which are less different in principle from those of barbarous nations than we are willing to admit, we shall see cause to doubt whether this is really the ruling motive. Most of us have laid flowers on the coffin of some dear one, or erected a tombstone to his memory, or subscribed for a monument to a statesman who in life has deserved well of his country. ”

“ To many persons, any kind of change in our treatment of the dead will be suggestive of sacrilegious interference, however remote, either in fact or by resemblance to it, such change may be. Millions still cherish deep emotions, connected both with the past and the future, in relation to the "Campo Santo," and the annual "Jour des Morts." And many of these might be slow to learn that, if the preservation of concrete remains, and the ability to offer the tribute of devotion at a shrine be desired, cremation equally, if not better than burial, secures those ends. ”

“ When the coffin was laid in the grave, a young man, probably the husband of the deceased, threw himself prone on the turf beside the open burial-trench, and burst into such a passionate tempest of heart-rending sobs and moans and wailings, that I had to move away. ”

“ And now his blessed body reposes in the cemetery with those of our many other brethren who have preceded us to the grave: we shall no more behold his sweet and loving figure; but his memory will always live with us, and we shall remember the luminous examples he has given us of prudence, amiability, profound piety and ardent love of labor and retirement. ”

“ Some great commission, connected with the resurrection of the dead, appears to be held by the chief spirit of the angelic world. "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God." The burial of each and every body which is destined to the resurrection of the just, is, therefore, not improbably an object of interest with him who, under the God-man, will have the supervision of the last day. ”

“ They have abundant opportunity of proving the fact of premature burial, since they so frequently exhume the bodies of the dead; sometimes they find the body in an altered position. There are various reasons for exhuming the bodies of the dead. Sometimes the spirit of the departed is dissatisfied with the grave and becomes troublesome to the living, subjecting them to annoyance and injury until the body is placed in another grave. ”

“ What is the utility of our burial service, which goes upon the supposition that God will attend to our requests as touching the dead we are about to consign to the grave? Freethinkers and rational thinkers discard the whole ceremony as a mockery. When once dead, the particles which composed our bodies are dissolved, and pass into new combinations—we never live again. ”

“ Beside the usual groups who straggle through the place, to amuse themselves by reading the inscriptions on the tombs, you might see many individuals kneeling on particular graves, where some relation lay—for the benefit of whose soul they offered up their prayers with an attachment and devotion which one cannot but admire. Sometimes all the surviving members of the family would assemble, and repeat a Rosary for the same purpose. Again, you might see an unhappy woman beside a newly-made grave, giving way to lamentation and sorrow for the loss of a husband, or of some beloved child. ”

“ What benefit in the future existence was in old time thought to accrue to those whose bodies had been duly dissolved, and to be withheld from revenants, is a question which may conveniently be adjourned for a while. First we must verify the results obtained from the study of the abnormal by consideration of the normal; we must see whether ordinary funeral usage has had for its sole object the dissolution of the dead in the interests of the dead; and what, if any, distinction has been made between inhumation and cremation as a means of securing that object. ”

“ Burial the Care of the Gods. And to shew how Religious an Act it is to bury the Dead; the Gentiles assign’d the Care of all Funerals and Sepulture to certain Gods they term’d Manes, whose chief was Pluto, call’d also Summanus, whence all Tombs and Monuments came to be dedicated, Diis Manibus. Homer, Euripedes, Aristotle and others have accounted Sepulture an Honour and Reward to Mens Actions; and on the contrary look’d on all such as miserable and unhappy whose Bodies lying unbury’d, wanted that last Happiness. ”

“ The Final Retrospect There is a new grave in the cemetery today. An hour ago the sad-hearted mourners, with fast-falling tears, looked for the last time upon that familiar face. The light has gone out of the eye, and the sound of the voice is stilled forever. ”

“ Their mourning song consists principally of the sounds represented by the three English notes mi mi, do do, la la; those who attend the funeral are expected to bring some articles to place in the coffin or about the grave as a token of respect for the dead. The articles which I have seen for this purpose have been cloth of some kind; a small piece of cloth is returned by the mourners to the attendants as a token of remembrance. They bury much sooner after death than white persons do, generally as soon as they can obtain a coffin. I know of no other native funeral ceremonies. ”

“ Figs. 3, 4.—Clay Vases found at Castle Hill of Rattray, Aberdeenshire (5 inches high) .
In the special features of such survivals as these we read the story of the transition from the older to the newer forms of burial resulting from the change of faith. We see the custom of burial with grave-goods retained as a ceremonial observance in Christian sepulture, and the practice of cremation succeeded by the symbolic act of strewing charcoal in the open grave, and by a ritual which still regards the act of burial as a consigning of “ashes to ashes;” ”