What moral purpose is answered in thus thrusting the thought of their dissolution upon the poor and miserable, amid their labors and wants? Is not life hard enough for them to bear, burthened with hunger and no food, with ignorant vice—habitual and early inculcated vice—which, in their view, is almost virtue, and certainly, is second nature? Must they turn horror-struck from the neglect, even to the remains of the poor beings who, like themselves, are not freed by death from the selfish contempt of their fellows? Why must the bell send forth those tones that seem to the sick and weak nerves of the feeble like a summons from the grave? Why this sickening array in musty black, this dressing up a banquet for the worm, with terrific ceremonies? Death is less awful to all, on account of the departure from life, than because of the black badges, the dark and gloomy retinue, that are associated in our minds with the event of it. When we think of dying, it is of being put in a coffin, the white shroud setting off, in loathsome contrast, the yellow palor of the face, and the indescribable expression of the human features without a soul; and then comes the black carriage, and that decaying pall, which has served so many like occasions, and which will itself, though with the sexton it looks as if it had a terrestrial immortality, finally perish, and be cast aside to rot, but with no ostentatious funeral. The motion, too, of this procession is slow; and our torture is felt as lingering and fated. At last, we rest in the dark earth—we are lonely and out of hearing—pinioned for ever! It would seem that human ingenuity had contrived a tissue of horrors to close the troubles of a human life.
Death is serious business, to be sure, and our passage through its shadows is a fearful journey. Yet it is an entrance to immortality. The entrance to magnificent temples, and brilliant theatres, is through dark portals—necessarily dark to be firm; and nothing human can add to the solemnity of death; but we may, by our sympathetic attempts at the terrible-sublime, change what is solemn and salutary into a source of disgust and aversion.
We come into a world of care, and want, and affliction, and our unconscious ears are struck with sounds of rejoicing. We enter upon an immortality of bliss, and around the self-same body there are wailing and lamentation.
I was perplexing myself for a solution of this strange inconsistency in our customs, when chancing to meet a philosophic friend, he relieved my perplexity, by saying: 'Oh, people are afraid of going to hell, and that their friends are gone there, and so they make all this sad array. They usher their relations into eternity—for the soul in our associations ever accompanies the body—as criminals are led to execution. Their awful fate thus finds an awful language.'
If these be the true reasons of the gloomy ceremonies of death, it is devoutly to be hoped that the fears of this result may in some cases be unfounded. We do not wish to controvert the idea of rewards and punishments hereafter, for they belong to the nature of the soul, whether in this world or in the next; but it seems rather extra-judicial, a plain case of supererogation, to bestow upon all the marks of divine justice before hand.
In case of executions in human justice, if they take place in terrorem, to awe the multitude into obedience, it is very well to dress the hangman in the probable habiliments of the devil, and to ride the culprit through the streets as a show, upon a pine coffin. There should be as little romance, as few flowers in his way, as possible. It is gross inconsistency, certainly, to introduce any softening circumstances into public executions, as well as mistaken mercy to the passions of men. In saying this, we suppose it is not pretended that the execution of human beings is authorized upon any other ground than support of the law. To execute privately, or with as little terror as possible, is to enact over again the trick of Nero to ensnare his subjects: for surely, the penalty is part of the law, and the execution of it should be as open as the condemnation, or the people are robbed of these horrid privileges of assisting their virtue.
But to return to our subject. We dislike our funerals, because they seem to be one of the remains of the many attempts to subject the people to the control of the priests. And now, we blush to write it, we fear the influence of the clergy in some churches is mainly dependent upon a certain idea people have, that their future destiny is somewhat in such hands. It is a poor compliment to our religious nature, to suppose we are most fit to give our hearts to God, when under an abject fear of death; that
'When thoughts of the last bitter hour
Come like a blight over our spirits,
And the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make us to shudder, and grow sick at heart,'
we are best prepared to pay that voluntary homage, to feel that free devotion, which can alone be pleasing to our Creator.