The ancients thought of the dead as being turned into shades; when we think of them we imagine rattling skeletons. The stupid and disgusting glorification of the skeleton did not originate with Christ; it is a product of the Middle Ages, as are the many tales of witches and ghosts that are related, especially in connection with churchyards, and still cling to them to-day.
The cremationists of to-day, who propose to substitute a decent æsthetic and sanitary mode of disposal of the dead for the present harmful and loathsome custom of inhumation, are repulsed, met by sentimental objections, are even called monsters without religion, without reverence for the dead.
But the apostles of incineration are as far removed from striving to suppress and murder such sacred feelings as is Dan from Beersheba. On the contrary, they believe that cremation is far more conducive to a pious veneration for the dead than interment.
What would you rather look upon, that horrible remnant of mortality, for which, as Bossuet says, “there has been found no name in any human language,” or the innocuous, pearly ash in the memorial urn of marble, alabaster, or one of the precious metals?
Cremation is humane, healthful, and, most of all methods, consonant to the natural impulse of Christianized veneration for the dead; serving and honoring that impulse by preventing the exposure of the dead to those visible elemental and chemical conditions and operations which breed a revolt of the feelings, and tend to surround the subject with an atmosphere of abhorrence.
Undoubtedly, one result of adopting generally the in-cinerative burial, will be a disassociation in our ideas from that existing and shocking conception of horrible bodily decay, in which almost every thought bestowed upon the dead is necessarily enveloped, and we will learn to contemplate the body with the cheerful philosophy of the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam:—
“‘Tis but a tent where takes his one day’s rest
A Sultan to the realms of death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes and prepares it for another guest.”