I would advise the person who holds the opinion that the resurrection cannot take place after cremation to seek quickly the nearest physician who makes a speciality of insanity. I wonder if such persons are conscious that they commit a sacrilege in doubting that God is omnipotent.
From a purely catholic point of view it is urged that incineration would destroy the relics of individuals who might afterward be canonized.
This is the most ridiculous objection of the whole lot! Are not the ashes of a saint as venerable as his bones? When such ashes are kept in a sealed urn, we may be certain of the genuineness of the relics. Today, there is no guarantee whatever of their genuineness—many cities claiming to possess the only real relics of this or that saint.
THE PORTLAND VASE.
(Originally a Cinerary Urn.)
There is no relation between cremation and religion. They are independent of each other. No passage in the Holy Bible prohibits incineration. The Christian religion does not oppose it, nor does the Jewish, as I learnt from an article in the Jewish Chronicle.
Some newspapers seem to think that cremation is contrary to the Jewish doctrines. Our brethren at Gibraltar and in the north of Africa bury their dead in quicklime. No one can deny the orthodoxy of the Jews on the shores of the Mediterranean, yet more than once have some of their number been disposed of in the manner related above; the method being carried out but lately at Mile-end. Among the Jews at London, instances of cremation are not unknown.
A Swiss clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Lange, declares that our Saviour never spoke a single word in condemnation of incineration. Dr. Altherr, Religious Journal for the People (No. 11, 1874), also entertains the same opinion.
An English Catholic pointed out that cremation would once more enable us to bury our dead in the churches, not only in the crypts of the sacred edifices, but also along the sides of the body of the churches.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher had a word to say about cremation in a recent sermon of his. He thought that the universal Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body would prevent any general acceptance of it while that teaching prevails. Of course, a man of a “classical” education cannot reject incineration altogether, especially when he considers it from a hygienic point of view.