Very interesting are also the other allegorical names which have been given to the burial-places of the dead. They are enlarged upon in Minshew's Guide to Tongues, under the head "Churchyard."
"Cæmeterium (from the Greek), signifying a dormitory or place of sleep. And a Hebrew term (so Minshew says), Beth-chajim, i. e. domus viventium, 'The house of the living,' in allusion to the resurrection."
Our matter-of-fact "Church-yard or inclosure" falls dull on the ear and mind after any of the above titles.
Hermes.
God's Acre.—The term God's Acre, as applied to a church-garth, would seem to designate the consecrated ground set apart as the resting-place of His faithful departed, sown with immortal seed (1 Cor. xv. 38.), which shall be raised in glory at the great harvest (Matt. xiii. 39.; Rev. xiv. 15.). The church-yard is "dedicated wholly and only for Christian burial," and "the bishop and ordinary of the diocese, as God's minister, in God's stead accepts it as a freewill offering, to be severed from all former profane and common uses, to be held as holy ground," and "to be God's storehouse for the bodies of His saints there to be interred." See "Bishop Andrewes' Form of Consecration of a Churchyard," Minor Works, pp. 328-333., Oxf., 1846.
Mackenzie Walcott, M.A.
P.S. When was the name of Poet's Corner first attached to the south transept of Westminster Abbey?
Jermyn Street.
Abbot Eustacius, of whom J. L. (Vol. iii., p. 141.) asks, was the Abbot of Flay, and came over from Normandy to England, and preached all through this kingdom with much effect in the beginning of John's reign, A. D. 1200, as Roger Hovedene tells us, Annal., ed. Savile, London, 1596, fos. 457. b, 466. b. Wendover (iii. 151.) and Matt. Paris in anno, mention him.