It is a clerical duty to dispel superstitions. “Superstition,” well says Sprengel, “is the grave of science.” But it is not only the grave of science, but of all progress. The clergy should aid the latter and not place obstacles in its way.
Colonel Olcott says:—
“I am too firm a believer in the immortality of the soul, to view with patience the inconsistency of those who behave over the dead bodies of their friends as if the immortal part were being laid away in the ground. The more I might love my dead, the less willing I should be to leave the fair form that had once held an immortal spirit to turn into putrid carrion under ground, and breed a myriad of loathsome creatures out of its own rottenness. The attempt to substitute the scientific, poetical, and rational system of cremation has my earnest sympathy. I pray heaven that it may be possible to commit my body or that of any of my beloved to the pure flame, that in one short hour will purge them of dross as gold is refined in the furnace seven times heated.”
Even the organ of the Mormon hierarchy, The Deseret News, that believes in an absolutely literal interpretation of the Bible, reasons thus:—
“Some object to cremation on the ground of its inconsistency with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. We do not see any force in that. No particle of matter is destroyed by fire; it is merely changed in form and reduced to primitive elements, or in their direction, for it is not clear that the action of fire extends so far as to resolve organized matter into its primal atoms. The same power that can call forth from the tomb a body that has decayed and gone to dust can quicken the dried ashes and draw from the elements the gases that have been dispersed by the flames of the crematory. How much of the actual particles that are seen now by the natural eye is necessary to the reformation of the human frame into a spiritual body with flesh and bones does not at present appear. But this is certain: the power that can resurrect the body from the grave or from the sea can bring it forth from any place or condition in the universe. Belief in the resurrection implies belief in God, and with him all things are possible.”
Kate Field, who of all Americans probably is best acquainted with Mormon life and doctrines, points out that when the literal Mormon abjures literalness, it is high time for orthodox Christians to cast away the above-mentioned sacrilegious objection.
How, by the way, about those who fall overboard and are swallowed by the fishes, or those who are blown up by an explosion? Are they to be consigned to eternal damnation simply because they happened to meet with an accident? Are they not to be raised hereafter?
The absurdity and unreasonableness of this erroneous notion was tersely and happily expressed by the Earl of Shaftesbury during a conversation with an eminent (Sir T. Spencer Wells, I believe) promoter of the present cremation movement. He said:—
“What would in such a case become of the blessed martyrs?”
Many of them have been reduced to ashes, and still these are held sacred.