The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1874-07-16

vine justice would raise them m hu1
| they could not have nationally had il, i
/ 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 a
/ christian, and we know that he relied
upon the resurrection. Well, Wick
iffe's remains were dug up, by order OF
| the council of Constance, loEg years af-
ter his burial, and we're 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, aud the Avon, and
the Severn into the narrow seas, by
which they we're 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
Iast o. SIs I-auel.ss5 -,:c,le;,-c'gw cf fsnRti-
cal hatred, were employed TO disperse
and destroy the very bones 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
eft of the greater promise made in the
faith he Taught? God could bring the
first of the great English reformers to-
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 50 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 a possibility in such g case. The
resurrection will 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 p gan process OF burning, nothing
could be more Hnfounded. No one
knows who invented the gailows but
we do know that to bury the dead was a
common procedure score of centuries
at the very least before Christ came. It
was 1850 years before Christ when Abra-
ham bought 8" the field of Machpelab,
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,
as the patriarch said, just before " he
gathered up his feet into the bed, ="
''they buried Abraham and Sarah his
wife there they buried Isaac and Re
bekRh his wife; there they buried
Leah" That it was not simply the
ashes of those dead that were placed in
the Cave of Machpelah, appears from
the circumstance that when Joseph died
in Egypt he was embalmed, in order
that he, too, ultimately might sleep at
Mamre. This also appears from the
circumstance that when Raehel-best
beloved of all-died, Jacob buried her
{" in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth
lehem, and there her grave is to be
seen to this day, as you could verify,
should you ever make pilgrimage 20
Palestine, as, of coarse, you will, IN
these days of universal travelling, and
we would recommend you to take a
very stiff course of Biblical reading for
a twelvemonth before you start, so as
to be well up in the localities. But that
is neither here nor there, and as it has
nothing to do with our subject, we have
introduced it, accordingly but when
you are at Bethlehem you viii see the
tomb Of Rachel. and that viii sho y you
that women were buried some thirty six
hundred years ago, and then .burying
was an old practice. There is nothing
heathenish in either bl,rying or burn
ing, and we can no more say who lighted
the first pyTe than we can say who made
the first grave, or Who built the first
tomb. Christians have been burned,
and buried, and drowned, and they
have even decayed in the air. Just so
has it been with pagans, or the heather.
Hence there is no positive religious as
sociation with either burning or bury
ing; but the fact that Our Lord was
laid in the tomb, and that he rose from
it, thus IMPLYING that resurrection be-
lief in which rests solely upon his au-
thority, must have great weight. not
only with devout minds, but upon the
general mind of ChristendOm, which is
by no means over devout. Christiani-
ty, it is true, gradually banished burn
ing, in the early ages. But, for all
that, RestGrqdDl can Just as appropriate
ly be written over a collection Of cineY-
ary urns in a cOLssDlbGTtJtDl as on the
gate of cemetery crowded with cOffins.