Human remains

“ The present, so full, so fearfully absorbing with the living, to the dead is a mystery; with those mouldering remains of man the past and the future are the great realities. The stillness, the uselessness if you will, of the old church-yard in the heart of the bustling city, renders it a more striking and impressive memento mori than the skull in the cell of a hermit. ”

“ Imagination only can recall the details of the event, so sad and awful. In the darkness of night the sons hasten to the new-made grave, throw off the slight covering of earth, and by the feeble light of a lantern discover the remains. ”

“ Other times they see him in the road, walking or standing still, and, more than this, he even throttles men.
‘Then there is a commotion and they run to the grave and dig to see the remains of the man ... and the dead man—one who has long been dead and buried—appears to them to have flesh and blood and nails and hair ... ”

“ Is it possible there is life there? Are we indeed in the presence of a mortal? Or one of the many who upon a day, many, very many years ago, stepped out of their graves, and were seen abroad? No; 'tis not one of those, but a wreck of a human being. ”

“ The far severed ages are linked together by the tale of death and sorrow—old as humanity yet ever new. The bleaching skeletons in their stony beds seem clothed again with human flesh and warm with living love. ”

“ There was the spirit, the life, hovering above the death bed, there was the spiritual body only partially enveloped by the mutilated remains, and there was the mortal body dismembered and cold in death. ”

“ This history of the world, where the epochs are counted from ruin to ruin, this picture of human life, which is only lighted up by the Volcanoes that have consumed it, fill the heart with a profound melancholy. How long man has existed! How long he has suffered and died! Where can we find his sentiments and his thoughts? Is the air that we breathe in these ruins impregnated with them, or are they for ever deposited in heaven where reigns immortality? ”

“ The mere presence of man, too—what is human—shares in this aspect of death. I have mentioned the cemeteries, mere plots of extinction, anonymous, without dates, leaving nothing of degradation to be added to the sense of hopelessness, futility, and oblivion. ”

“ I have written of strange visitants from other realms, and of that vivid illumination which at moments lays bare the hidden springs of life, when the spirit emerges beyond the limit of human thought, and familiar things, beyond the horizon of life, and touches a sphere beyond immortality. It is a condition that the grave has nothing to do with, a beholding beyond the frontiers of the soul. ”

“ And the dead do not return. That is why there is nothing lurking in the heart of the shadows, and no human mystery in the colours, and neither the same joy nor the kind of peace in dawn and sunset that older lands know. ”

“ That such a power might extend over the dead—that is, over certain thoughts and memories that the dead may still retain—and compel, not that which ought properly to be called the Soul, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather a phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to make itself apparent to our senses—is a very ancient though obsolete theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. ”

“ There was naturally something that seemed extra-human in the mysterious force which was capable of bidding the present-day world vanish like a shadow into either the future or the past, its solid-seeming substance melt away like "the airy fabric of a vision," and summon in an instant, too brief to be measured, the past from the grave where it lay buried beneath the dust of uncounted ages, or the future from the womb of unborn things. ”

“ What a strange thing it is—this balancing between death and life—standing on the edge of the grave, and turning, first to look into its approaching darkness, and then back on the familiar and pleasant world, yet with a certain downward progress, and no hope of life, beyond the day over your head! ”

“ In what quarter of the habitable globe, aud under what circumstances? Should we be among the living, or the dead? The dead! What a solemn thought, to think that our bones might be reposing in the soil of the stranger thousands of miles from all we loved, and from all that loved us! What a startling idea! And vet, in our journeyings, how indifferent, how careless had we been of life! With what fooihardiness had we even dared death to meet us! And still, with all the frightful warnings of the past before us, how recklessly were we plunging on to new scenes of danger! ”

“ As conscious physical beings (we are not discussing the question of immortality) , the cradle and the grave meet in one mystery. It is the putting on and the putting off of consciousness; all that lies between we call life—finite, limited life. ”

“ Have you ever shot in imagination the dreadful gulf that stands fixed between life and death, and between time and eternity? Have you ever tried to get a glimpse beforehand of your own place where you will be an hour after your death, when they are putting the grave-clothes on your still warm body, and when they are measuring your corpse for your coffin? ”

“ Know that when the time of your death has arrived, those most dear, will be the first to thrust you out. And what will be your real home? A grave will be the home of your body until the day of judgment; and your soul will have to go to its long home, either to paradise or to hell. ”

“ Do the dead return? Are the dead indeed dead? You have nailed down the coffin-lid; you have seen the coffin as it sunk into the grave; you have heard the rattling of the clod,—but is that all? Is the beloved one whom you have given to the grave, indeed dead, or only more truly living in a new body, formed of refined matter, invisible to our gross organs? Is that which we call soul, only the result of a particular organization of gross matter, or is it the real, eternal substance of which all other matter is but the servant and the expression? Do the dead return? ”

“ Like many other people, they seem to have wavered between a belief [Pg 315] that the souls of the dead lingered invisible near their old homes and the belief that the disembodied spirits went away to a distant land, where all human souls, which have departed this life, met and dwelt together. ”

“ Our physical nature starts and shudders at the thought of joining the silent numbers of the dead; but our spiritual nature catches a glimpse of that spirit-life beyond the portals of the tomb, where life, pure, free and joyous, shall be ours. ”

“ Here and there I meet with an individual who is alive to the powers of the world to come; but the vast majority move onwards to the tomb, as though that receptacle of death was to terminate their existence. ”

“ The dead appeal to us by the mesmeric agency of their immortality; they throw out, through every movement of the world’s circumstances and events, a suggestion of their needs, their condition, and their destiny. ”

“ Now the ruling spirit of the World had to bring back to life all the dead and send them up from below, whereupon there arose on the Earth a mighty digging, shaking, rustling, stirring, sliding, bustling, conferring, seizing and speculating, as all the millions of dead creatures tried to come back to life and went to extraordinary lengths to get hold of their former souls again. ”

“ The body returned to the earth, the breath to the winds, the fire of the glance to the sun, and the ethereal soul to the world of the pure. Such were the ideas of mortal dispersion formed by ancient humanity. ”

“ We have nothing here but the relics of death and destruction: there is no feeling, no memory, no voice, in these dry bones; no living tenant in these hollow skulls, to recount to us the history of former times. ”

“ The grave that covers up and buries the past, inters not all pain and sorrow with the dead, but leaves a portion behind, that the living may feel what they once suffered—the agonizing shriek, and the heart-rending cry, ring for ages after upon our ears;—such sounds disturb not the silent chambers of the dead! ”

“ The human soul hungers, and it must have food deposited upon the grave. It suffers from cold, and the body must be wrapped about with cloths. It is in darkness, and a light must be kindled at the head of the grave. It wanders through plains and across streams, subject to the providences of this life, in quest of its place of enjoyment, and when it reaches it, it finds every species of sensual trial, which renders the place not indeed a heaven of rest, but another experimental world—very much like this. ”

“ Sometimes nothing remains; sometimes, it may be, a few huge rocks standing on end, or piled one upon another. Such remains, when you discover them, you account for by attributing their formation to races of men who have passed away. ”

“ At the grave the dead man is once more washed, wrapped in clean linen cloths, and thus lowered into the earth. And this is as it should be. Why should the pomp and extravagance of man accompany him to his last resting-place? ”

“ The immortal bones obey control
Of dying flesh and dying soul.
"'Tis long till eve and morn are gone:
Slow the endless night comes on,
And late to fulness grows the birth
That shall last as long as earth. ”

“ Every one will have heard that persons who have been drowned and recovered, have had—in what would have been their last moments, if no means had been used to revive them—a strange vision of the past, in which their whole life seemed to float before them in review ”

“ Instead of conceiving of life as a whole, as comprised between the cradle and the grave, it will be regarded in its larger and truer scope as a series of experiences and achievements, infinite in length and in their possibilities and unbroken by the change we call death. ”

“ O my God! of what avail are riches, possessions, and kingdoms in death, when nothing is needed but a coffin, and a simple robe to cover the body? Of what avail are honours, when nothing remains of them but a funeral train and a pompous burial, which will assist the soul in no way if it be lost? Of what avail is beauty, if nothing remains of it but worms, corruption, and horror, even before death, and afterwards nothing but a little foul dust? ”

“ In some deserted grave—I cannot tell you why,
But I should like to sleep in some neglected spot
Unknown to every one, by every one forgot.
There lying I should taste with my dead breath
The utter lack of life, the fullest sense of death ”

“ But imagination followed the fate of the soul beyond the tomb into a world of its own, the entrance to which lay in the West, whither also the sun journeyed before sinking down into darkness, and which was depicted as a faded counterpart of the world of men. That the more primitive conception of the dwelling of the soul in the grave still held its ground is to be explained by the demands of ancestor worship. ”

“ The grave was called the place of darkness, where there was neither knowledge, or device, or wisdom, and was that to which allusion was made in saying, that those in the graves shall hear the voice of God, and shall live. ”

“ Death does not mean the end of life. The grave is not the goal of men, no more than is the earth the goal of seeds.
17. Life is the consequence of death. The seed may seem to die, but from its grave the tree arises into life.
18. So man may seem to die, but he lives on, and from the grave he springs up into life. ”

“ We become impressed with the fact, “that multitudes of people have moved over the surface of the Earth, and sunk into the night of oblivion, without leaving a trace of their existence: without a memorial through which we might have at least learned their names.” ”

“ Where are the bodies of those lost ones over whom the melancholy waves alone have been chanting requiem? What shrouds were wrapped round the limbs of beauty, and of manhood, and of placid infancy, when they were laid on the dark floor of that secret tomb? Where are the bones, the relics, of the brave and the timid, the good and the bad, the parent, the child, the wife, the husband, the brother, the sister, the lover, which have been tossed and scattered and buried by the washing, wasting, wandering sea? The journeying winds may sigh as year after year they pass over their beds. ”

“ Dear ones of earth, linked to our hearts by the most tender ties, have departed and gone away into the unknown realm. We have carefully and tearfully laid their bodies in the grave to slumber till the great awakening morning. ”

“ Such familiarity with death may harden some natures—surely there was the semblance of utter callousness of heart in many such scenes, where dead men were hurried into the graves with scarce a foot of earth above the rotting clay. ”

“ But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;—'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. ”

“ And the "dead past's dead" unburied,
⁠By a magic word reveal.
Life has many hidden currents,
⁠Like the cave-streams of the earth,
Flowing deep and strong in secret,
⁠Ne'er betraying bourne or birth ”

“ When these semi-human ancestors died, they went into the ground, leaving their sacred stones or sticks behind them on the spot, and in every case some natural feature arose to mark the place, it might be a tree, a rock, a pool of water, or what not. The memory of all such spots has been carefully preserved and handed down from generation to generation by the old men, and it is to these spots that down to the present day the souls of all the dead regularly repair in order to await reincarnation. ”

“ I lived over again the departed age—I recalled to life the buried generations—I contemplated the happiness which the grave had long since hid in her bosom—and the discoloured stones around me seemed to echo the busy goings on of an industrious population. ”