Should not the fearful consequences of such unhallowed proceedings be viewed as the retributive hand of Heaven, overtaking those concerned in the desecration of the dead? The appropriation of the soil, which should have been held as sacred;—of human remains, for the purposes of agriculture—the cultivation of vegetables and flowers! and by one, too, holding the sacred office of a pastor. O tempora! O mores!
Considering the immense importance of the subject, in a moral as well as in a physical point of view, it is lamentable in the extreme and truly disgraceful to a nation boasting of its character, general superiority, and wealth, that a practice (intramural burial) should obtain, in behalf of which no one single argument can be adduced, but against which, religion, history, common sense, and daily experience may be arrayed.
On reviewing the foregoing observations, and on seriously contemplating the condition of the ill-ventilated rooms and workshops, the damp, dark, and insalubrious cellars,—little better than dungeons,—the dreary, close, stifling courts, and narrow dark alleys of this vast metropolis, into which the light of heaven rarely penetrates;—we say, while contemplating these abodes of our lower classes, (which would be injurious even to swine,) the culpable apathy, prejudice, and bad arrangements of those whose duty it is to remedy such crying evils, cannot but be obvious. In conclusion, we would therefore earnestly recommend to all such delinquents for their guidance, and to all those enlisted in the cause of sanitary reform, the salutary directions as to washing, cleansing, purification, &c., conveyed in the Mosaic Ordinances, especially in the following passages, as showing with what minuteness all matters appertaining to health, to the very freeing of houses from damp, were directed; that we, the enlightened and refined of the nineteenth century, may profit thereby.
“34 When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy[8] in a house of the land of your possession;
35 And he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house:
36 Then the priest shall command that they empty the house, before the priest go into it to see the plague, that all that is in the house be not made unclean; and afterwards the priest shall go in to see the house:
37 And he shall look on the plague, and, behold, IF the plague be in the walls of the house with hollow strakes, greenish or reddish, which in sight are lower than the wall;
38 Then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the house seven days:
39 And the priest shall come again the seventh day, and shall look: and, behold, if the plague be spread in the walls of the house;