During these prayers, the mourners stand up and answer. Other invocations mention “the soul of my father” or “mother,” etc., as the case may be. In the service for the dead read over the corpse, these words occur: “O Lord our God, cause us to lie down in peace, and raise us up, O our King, to a happy life. I laid me down fearless and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustained me.” All through the Old Testament we constantly find “sleep” used as a synonym for death. Scattered through the morning and evening services of the Hebrew liturgy there are invocations, frequently repeated, referring to the dead, such as these: “Thou, O Lord, art for ever powerful; thou restorest life to the dead, and art mighty to save. Thou art also faithful to revive the dead: blessed art thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead.” God is also said “to hold in his hands the souls of the living and the dead,” thus giving at least equal prominence to the departed and those they have left in their place. The Jews believe and hope that their prayers on earth benefit and refresh their lost brethren, and pray daily for them. The bodies of the departed are plainly dressed in a linen shroud without superfluous ornamentation, but many of the old ceremonies and purifications enjoined in the old law are now dispensed with. The old manner of [pg 276] burial was in a cave or spacious sepulchre in a field or garden, and the body was wrapped in spices, which were often burnt around it. The double cave of Mambre, bought for Sarah by Abraham, stood at the end of a field, and the sepulchres of the kings were also in a field. The garden where Our Lord was laid is another instance of the universality of this custom. In the Second Book of Chronicles[126] we read of King Asa that “they buried him in his own sepulchre which he had made for himself in the city of David: and they laid him on his bed full of spices and odoriferous ointments, which were made by the art of the perfumers, and they burnt them over him with great pomp.” This burning (of spices) is often mentioned throughout Holy Writ. Rachel, says the Book of Genesis,[127] was buried “in the highway” that led to Bethlehem, and Jacob erected a pillar over her sepulchre; Samuel, “in his own house at Ramatha”; and Saul, beneath an oak near the city of Jabes Galaad, the inhabitants of which place provided for his burial, and fasted seven days in sign of mourning for their sovereign. Joram, king of Juda, was punished for his misdeeds by exclusion from the sepulchre of his fathers, “and the people did not make a funeral for him according to the manner of burning [spices], as they had done for his ancestors.”[128] Ozias, being a leper, a disease which came upon him in punishment for having usurped sacerdotal functions, was buried “in the field” only “of the royal sepulchre.” Thus we see the immense importance attached to the place of burial under the old Jewish dispensation, and how it was an eternal disgrace to be expelled in death from the neighborhood of one's family and their hereditary place of entombment. This feeling has continued very strong in most civilized and in all savage races; the graves of their forefathers are even more symbolical of home and fatherland to the wandering desert tribes of different nations, than what we should call their hearths and firesides. In later times, how often have we not seen gorgeous and imposing buildings, especially cathedrals and abbeys, built over the shrine of a dead king or bishop, canonized by that popular veneration whose last expression was the public honor decreed them by the Roman Pontiff? In places where these monuments are not dedicated to the sainted dead whose shrines they guard, we often find them burdened with the condition of Masses being perpetually offered within their walls for the soul of the dead founder; others are memorial churches to friends or relations of the founder. Public charities, doles of bread and money, annual distributions of clothing, hospitals, schools, or municipal institutions, etc., spring chiefly from the desire of the survivors to have their loved ones remembered to all future ages, while sometimes a generous testator himself will take this simple and practical means of recommending himself to the prayers of unborn generations. Family names are perpetuated in remembrance of the departed; family records are valuable only in proportion as they embody a proof of longer or shorter descent from the distinguished dead. There is no test of success or popularity so sure as that of death, and no one can tell which of our living friends will be known to and loved by future nations, and which other will be passed by in obscurity and silence, until long after our exit and their own from this [pg 277] present life-scene. Real life is centred in the dead, it revolves around them, it depends on them. They are the root of which we are the leaves and flowers. The life of fame is theirs, while only the life of struggle is ours; they are victors calmly bearing their palms, umpires gently encouraging their successors, but we are only striving competitors, who know not and never will know our fate till we have gone with them beyond the veil.
Germany is, above all, the home of these beautiful traditions of an unbroken communion between the souls who have left earth and those who remain behind. There are the churchyards most loved, and the anniversaries of deaths most remembered, even among Protestants. It is a custom in Germany to wear black and to keep the day holy every recurring anniversary, were it twenty, forty, fifty years after the death of a relative or beloved friend. The cemeteries are always blooming with every flower of the season, the crosses or headstones always hung with wreaths of immortelles. In Catholic German countries, such as Bavaria, the festival of All Souls' is one of the most interesting, because the most individual of the ecclesiastical year. We happened to be in Munich on one of these occasions, and had been there for a week previous, visiting the galleries and inspecting the art-manufactures for which that city is world-famous. But rich as it is in such treasures, the hand of its old King Louis—the grandfather of the present sovereign, and whom in his retirement we have met at Nice some few years before his death—has effaced much of its mediæval stamp, and attempted to varnish it over with a Renaissance coating very uncongenial to the northern character of its people and the northern mistiness of its atmosphere. Here we have again the wretched imitation in plaster of the marble Parthenon and Acropolis; the cold stuccoed pillars looming like huge bleached skeletons through a November fog, and yet supposed to represent the sun-tinted columns of exquisite workmanship that rear themselves against the purple sky of Greece; the vast desert-looking streets which, bordered by “Haussmann” palaces, seem intended for future rather than present habitation, and each of which, if cut into a dozen equal parts, would furnish any capital with twelve good-sized public squares; above all, a stuccoed church, dazzlingly, painfully white, the Theatiner-Kirche, a sort of S. Paul's (London) without the smoky coat thrown over it by the chimneys of the busy city. Then, turning with relief to the little that is left of the old town, we find a few quaint streets leading to the cathedral, a plain but grand building, very fairly “restored” and adorned with the distinctive Munich statues of angels and saints, which are now sold all over the world, as the worthy substitutes of plaster-of-Paris images of the Bernini type of sculpture. A very interesting old triptych stands over the altar, with its strange medley of figures forming a striking and novel reredos. A procession was slowing winding its way down the aisles as we entered the cathedral one afternoon, and though the congregation was not numerous it was very devout. A few comfortable-looking old houses and quiet streets surround the cathedral, and form quite an oasis in the midst of the modernized city. Indeed, the monotonous stretch of apparently uninhabited mansions was really wearying to look at, and we began to think that King Louis had built his town as if he expected its population to increase at a Chicagoan rate! It [pg 278] is true the season of fêtes had not come, and, according to the recognized phrase, “all the world” had left Munich for the country villas and hunting-boxes in its neighborhood, but on the day of All Saints, the vigil of All Souls, how magically the scene changed! After Mass in the Royal Chapel, which, by the way, is beautifully decorated with frescoes of mediæval saints on a gilt background, we started for the great “Gottes-Acker” (churchyard.) We had been told that this was worth seeing, and so it proved. The desert seemed to have blossomed like the rose. The road leading to the cemetery was crowded with carriages, carts, horsemen, and foot passengers. Every one, especially those on foot, carried wreaths of immortelles and small lanterns. The carriages were mostly laden with wreaths. Every one looked cheerful, but great quiet prevailed throughout the crowd. It seemed to us that until the dead called for a visit, the living in Munich must have been well hidden, so great were now the numbers that incumbered the hitherto lonely road. All were going in the same direction, and once there the scene was almost festive. Military bands (the best, we believe, next to the Austrian) were stationed near the cemetery gates. The “Gottes-Acker” itself is an immense square, the length being about twice the breadth of the inclosure. Round the four sides runs a covered cloister, under which are all the graves, monuments, and vaults of the more wealthy part of the Munich population. Each of these was a perfect forest of evergreens and hot-house plants, artistically heaped up around a vessel of holy water, from which any pious passer-by was free to sprinkle the grave while repeating a prayer for its occupant. The large square in the centre was crossed and recrossed by narrow paths between the serried files of graves. Nearly all were distinguished by a cross, of stone, marble, wood, or metal. To these the wreaths and lamps were hung, and here and there a kneeling figure might be seen. Within the covered cloister a dense crowd promenaded slowly, while the bands played unceasingly, not always, however, appropriately. It was a striking scene, the like of which we do not remember to have ever witnessed elsewhere. At Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, the cemetery is similar to this in construction and arrangement, though it is, of course, smaller in size. Night fell gradually as we were admiring this peculiar expression of national idiosyncrasy, but the crowd did not seem to grow less dense. It was a remembrance worth carrying away from that old Munich whose spirit, though outwardly imprisoned in a pseudo-classic shape, lives yet in the simple Christian instincts of its laboring classes. At this time, when it threatens to become another Wittenberg, have we not also seen the unconscious and magnificent protest of its inveterately Catholic feelings in the unique Passion Play, that worthily kept relic of the heroic ages of faith and chivalry? Kings and philosophers cannot change the world as long as peasants like those of Ammergau, and artisans such as work in the Munich manufactories—that should not be degraded to comparison with the materialistic establishments of Manchester or Sheffield—are yet to be found bearing through the present times the banner of their forefathers' undying traditions. There is more simple faith among the German people, including also the Slavic and Hungarian races, than among some other modern Christian nations, and no doubt there must be a hidden law of gracious compensation in this fact, [pg 279] since the same country has been the cradle and the teacher of almost every modern heresy and philosophical (sic) aberration. No doubt the faith of the masses is intimately connected with their wonderful love of home and fatherland, their domestic instincts, their love of quiet family gatherings. All this easily leads to great love and tenderness for the departed, and it reads almost more like a German than a French saying, that “the dead are not the forgotten, but only the absent.”[129] Love for the dead and a reverent, prayerful remembrance of them are as much bulwarks to the morality of the living, as they are spiritual boons to the departed themselves. We would not speak ill of an absent friend, or break our word with one who had gone on a long journey; even a short earthly distance seems to make a pledge more sacred. How much more when the distance is the immeasurable breadth of the valley of the shadow of death! We all of us remember promises once made to those who have fallen asleep in Christ: those promises will be guardian angels to us, if we keep them; they will be so many drops of refreshing dew to those who are perhaps suffering at this moment for the unfulfilled promises once made by them in life. Shall we whose faith includes the communion of saints as a vital dogma, and whose humble hope it must ever be to become one of the church suffering after having done our weak share in the cause of the church militant—shall we be no better for this belief than are those who have it not? Let the dead be guides to us, while we are helps to them; let us each remember that besides the angel we have at our side, there is another spirit who rejoices or grieves for and with us—a company of spirits perhaps, but seldom less than one.
Mother or father, sister, brother, husband, wife, or child, that spirit from its prison looks sadly and lovingly earthward, marking our every step from its own patient haven of suffering sinlessness. No longer racked by the personal fear of falling away, no longer haunted by the possibility of temptation, it concentrates its loving anxiety on the soul whom it will perchance precede to heaven, but on whom it is yet dependent; let us not grieve it, let us not willingly or knowingly wound it, but rather let us take heed that we fit ourselves to go and bear it company in the new and glorious God's-Acre to which we hope to be called when that “which was sown in mortality shall be raised in immortality, and that which was sown in dishonor and weakness shall be raised in glory and in power.”
Personal Recollections Of The Late President Juarez Of Mexico.
I. The President In The Reception-Room.
We saw President Juarez for the first time in the fall of 1865. He was then temporarily established with his government in the town of El Paso, on the northern frontier of Chihuahua, and within almost a stone's throw of American soil. Fort Bliss, Texas, then recently reoccupied by the Union troops, was not more than ten minutes' distance from the Plaza of El Paso.
The prospects of the Mexican Republic were not then very bright; the treasury was almost exhausted, the government was barely on Mexican soil, and on the American side of the Rio Grande it was generally looked upon as a question of time when President Juarez would have to seek safety on our own side of the boundary. It is needless to say that he would have been received by the Americans of that region with right royal hospitality.
American sympathy and material aid were looked for, and Americans were very popular with all the followers of the Mexican president.
Shortly after the arrival of President Juarez and his cabinet in El Paso, we joined a party of American gentlemen who paid him a visit. The party comprised, we think, nearly all the Americans of any standing about El Paso. There were the American consul, the collector of customs, three or four army officers from Fort Bliss, some local civil officials, and one or two leading business men.