Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1874-04-09
CREMATION,

sons we're present. Charles A. Dana,
Rev. 0. B. rockingham, Henry Bergh
and others sent letters approving the
object of the meeting, which seemed to
he to form an organization to dissent
nate their peculiar views. They have
undertaken the herculean task of edu'
eating the public mind in regard to Gre
nation and securing its practical appli-
cation. How they came to educate
themselves first, is the question. Some
ancient heather nations, we are told,
burned their dead, but they were people
who left no works Of art or monuments
of industry behind them Of any benefit
to the world. They doubtless ate,
drank and were merry, and gave
themselves up to lascivious pleasures,
regarding death as an eternal step
and man simply as an animal.
The Jews through whose prophets and
wise men came all the light of revela'
ton and the plan of salvation to the Cen
tile world. were most scrupulous in their
care for the dead. Jacob bought cave
where his bones might be laid, and
Joseph strictly enjoined it upon his
brethren tc carry his bones with them
when they escaped from Egyptian bond
age. And SO at all times they attached
much importance to the -sepulture OF
their dead, and paid great respect to the
remains of their deceased friends SO
it has been with all civilized nations,
even when not associating funeral cere-
monies with their religious faith. As
people become more civilized and refined
they pay more respect to the
remains of the dead, and often
adorn their cemeteries with beautiful
works of art on which the nm
ger of affection traces the tribute
of fond and endearing memory.
But it has been reserved for our modern
civilization to produce men and women
who, ghoullike, propose to enter the
precincts of the grave and apply its con-
tents to the uses of gusno. They boldly
assert that it is robbing nature to hide
away dead bodies when the same would
enrich the soil from whence their susie
nance was drawn, and restore strength
and tone to lands worn out and ex-
hausted in producing nutritious food for
the human race. They would dig up
the ashes of our ancestors and plough !
down the graveyard as matter of
economy. Instead Of pausing to handle
a skull, once the abode of ethereal life,
the husbandman would be expected to
pulverize it with hoe and sprinkle the
fragments over his beds Of early garden
peas 10 hasten the crop for his table.
This is eminently practical age
when people of arning and position in
sist that it is cheaper and easier to burn
the dead as soon as they are cold than
to buy a lot and place them beneath the
sod. II is urged that the old fashioned |
burial is a waste of substances needed |
to enrich the soil. Experiments have
already been made in London, and it is
ascertained that body can be reduced
in an hour by the use of furnace made
for the purpose to five pounds of ashes.
They say that when man is dead he is
nothing more than any other dead ami
NAL, which, from chemical standpoint,
is doubtless a fact. But are there no
tender associations clinging around the
last resting place of the dead2 Surely
we approach the grave with reverence
and almost religious awe, aud by the
little flowers which lift up their heads on
the low mound, or the shaft Of marble,
are pointed to that heaven where we
hope they have gone. Who could enter
Westminster Abbey without profound
sense Of mans mortality as be walked
among the tombs of warriors, statesmen,
authors, poets and scholars numbered
with the mighty dead Of England. One
of the speakers at the New York meeting
said:
The thing most essential for the growth
OF vegetables is earbonic acid. 1t is a
grand mistake 70 urn your ashes. Let
them be scattered over the fields. The
baby born weighs two pounds, this body
weighs two hundred and fifty pounds;
where did / get III By eating wheat and
fruit and meat II bury my body be
Tond frucii6cation, am a thief You
can appsal TO the fine tat fellows, the
rourmands. Tell them. IL die. nv
Eases are given 10 the earth, my ashes
sre scattered over the earth, and nouri.h
the seeds aud plants The OK eats the
plants and men eat the OK, and those
very elements come back and live again.
Physical existence mast be pleasing io
such persons.
Such cold-b'ooded remarks could only
come from a man destitute Of all the