The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-07-10

terrible infiictiOn, confidence that di-
vine justice would raise them mp, but
they could not have nationally had it, il
to burn here is prohibition of future
life. But this may be said to relate to
persons who were burned alive, and
therefore it is not strictly in point,
Take, then, the fate that befel the re-
mains of certain christians. No pro-
testant can say that Wickliffe was not q
christian, and we know that he relied
upon the resurrection. Well, Wick
liffe's remains were dug mp, by order of
the council of Constance, long years af-
ter his burial, and were burned, and
cast into running Water,-and we all
know how beautifully Fuller has turned
to noble purpose the fact that the hero
ic and heretcial ashes were borne
through the Swift, and the Avon, and
the Severn into the narrow seas, by
which they were taken into the main
ocean, and by that spread over the
earth, the very emblem of his faith.
Earth and air, fire and water,-these
last by the intense malignity of fanati-
cal hatred, were employed to dispense
and destroy the very bosias OF the Rec
tor of Lutterworth, and the bones often
survived in the old burnings,-and yet
Wickliffe is as much. alive now as he
was when he preached at Lutterworth,
just five hundred years ago, for he was
appointed there in 1874. And will it
be argued, that, because his very last
remains were not only denied burial,
but burned, he is to be denied the ben
efir of the greater promise made in the
faith he taught God could bring the
l..
gether in the body with no more diff
Guilty than he would find in bringing
together the millions upon millions of
men who have slept so long in " earth's
benignant bosom" as Homer SO we'll
called it so long ago, or the myrisds of
men who, to borrow Shakespeare's
words, "are in the deep bosom of the
ocean buried.
Difficulty is not to be spoken of as
even possibility in such case. The
viii be a miracle, and
therefore cannot be questioned by
earth, or water, or fire, or by the air to
which the Parsees consign their dead.
As to the assertion, that burying the
dead is the christian mode of disposing
of the insenate clay in opposition to
the pagan process of burning, nothing
could be more unfounded. No one
knows who invented the gallows +; but
we do know that to bury the dead was
common procedure a score of centuries
at the very least before Christ came. 1t
was 1860 years before Christ when Abra-
ham bought "the field of Machpelah,
which is before Mamre, in tie land of
Canaan, for a possession
Of burying-place," as the dying Jacob
says, in one of the most pathetic pas
sages of the Old Testament, and there,
rs the patriarch said, just before :" he
gathered up his feet into the bed,"
Is they buried Abraham and Sarah his
wife there they buried Isaac and Re-
Dekah his wife; there they buried
Leah" That it was not simply the
ashes of those dead that were placed in
;he Gave of Machpelah, appears from
,he circumstance that when Joseph died |
n Egypt he was embalmed, in order |
hat he, too, ultimately might sleep at |
Mamre. This also appears from the /
that when Rachel-best |
beloved of all-died, Jacob buried her |
8 in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth |
chem, and there her grave IS to be |
een to this day, as you could verify, |
hould you ever make pilgrimage TO |
Palestine, as, of coarse, you will, in |
hese days or unIversal travelling, I
We would recommend you to take |
cry stiff course of Biblical reading for
twelvemonth before you start, so as
o be well up in the localities. But that
s neither here nor there, and as it has
lothing to do with our subject, we have
Introduced it, accordingly but when
ON are at RethlehAm Won will see the
omb of Rachel, and that will sho Y you
hat women were buried some thirty SIX
undred years ago, and then buryiDg
Tas an old practice. There is nothing
eathenish in either bt.rying or burn
ng, and we can no more say who lighted
he first pyre than we can say who made
he first grave, or Uho built the first
omb. Christians have been burned,
nd buried, and drowned,-and they
ave even decayed in the air. Just SO
as it been with pagans, or the heather.
fence there is no positive religious as
ociation with either burning or bury
1g; but the fact that Our Lord was
hid in the tomb, and that he rose from
!, thus typifying that resurrection be-
EFF in which rests solely upon his au-
lority, must have great weight, not
My with devout minds, but upon the
eneral mind of Christendom, which is
y no means over devout. Christiani-
:, it is true, gradually banished burn
lg, in the early ages. But, for all
lat, Res,rg1D1 can just as appropriate
: be written over collection of ciner-
ry urns in coLatn1bGriatn1 as on the
ate of cemetery crowded with collins.