The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-07-11 00:00:00

on the IP nig by the noxious and deadly gases and
VAIN .11114 emitted from the dead body during the process
of e,rruption, but they overlooked the fact that all
the gases were absorbed by the treeftand shrubs which
w( and ought to be plantedin our cemeteri(s and gra s ()-
yards. Re .Wded the fteftetice ot the burial of our
great departed in such noble buildings as the venerable
Abbey at Westminster and St. Paul's Cathedral, as
being productive of the greatest public good by conse-
crating national virtu... genius. knowledge, art, and skill,
and by cherishing in the minds of the living a heroic
spirit if enlightened patriotism, just as was the case
with the burial of the illustrious dead who were laid
in olden days in those magnificent tombs in the Campus
Martins and along the banks of the Tiber at Rome.
In all civilized ages burning the dead had been regarded
with horror as an act of barbarism, and he could not
contemplate its into sluction here without a feeling
of very crave apprehension. Another ground on whdh
this custom (if burning seas defended, and on which
great stress had been laid, was that of economy. he
freely admitted that the enormous cost of funerals in
great cities was a subject deserving of attention, and
that something ought to be dune to reduce it. The
annual cost of funerals in London was estimated at
over a million of money; but he would ask if that fact
was sufficient to justify the startling proposal which
bad been made, in the interest of national economy, to
utilize the ashes of the dead after burning them by
scattering them over the land as a fertilizing agent.
There was no conceivable ground on which the custom
could be defended. The persecutors of the martyrs in
the second century burnt their bodies and cast the
ashes into the Tiber, but this they did to refute the
doctrine of the Resurrection and to prevent it spread-
ing through the world. The extinction of that great
doctrine would be fraught with the most ruinous con-
sequences. As it was, we could not close or eyes to
the wide-spread licentiousness and immorality which
prevailed in all the great capitals of the world, against
which philanthropists were contending almost in vain
—a state of things which would be confirmed and in-
creased by the introduction of a custom from which
men's better natures shrunk.

The foregoing has evoked the following replies:—
Sir,—May I point out that the Bishop of Lincoln is in error
In his allusion to the burial of the Romans--" the illustrious
dead who were laid in old days in those magnificent
tombs in the Campus Martins and along the Tiber at
Rome?" Instead of burying the bodies in these tombs, as
the Bishop apparently supposes, it was simply the urn
containing the ashes of the dead that it was placed therein
Ilence the frequently/ beautiful monuments often formed
the most artistic oait-door embellishments of a city as
they ranged on each side of the streeta of tombs. Ilad they
been accompanied by the horrors of the malern cemetery,
this could not have been the case So far from its being
true that " in all civilized ages burning the dead has been
regarded with horror as an net of barliarism," the Romans
took care to burn their noble dead ; their slaves they
appsrently did not think always worth that trouble. I
have lately seen many small marble boxes and vases con-
taining the ashes of Romans burnt before the Christian
era, and both in columbaria and family tombs found them
in perfect preservation. Could we say the same of any
mode of allowing the dead to rot In the ground? No
And all who, like the good Bishop, desire to honour and
perpetuate the memory of the illustrious dead, will find
that this old way is, in addition to its other advantages, the
one which, above all others, enables its to do this most
effectively. W. R.

Sir,— Will you permit me through 'I he Timex to ask the
Bishop of Lincoln if he thinks the practice of incremation
would endanger the popular belief in the Resurrection of
the Body, and what he imagines the opinion of the world
to be as touching the future of those Martyrs whose Is Mies
have been incremated - I am, yours obediently,

IL N. D'ALMAINE
St John's Par9onage, 44, Great Marlborough-Arent,
London.