National Republican., 1884-02-25
SHALL WE BURN OUR DEADs
Rev. DIR. Domer, OF st. Pau1's English
Lutheran Church, Says "Now

Rev. DIR. Domer, OF st. Pau1's English
Lutheran Church, Says "Now
Tho lecture last night at st. Paul's English
Lutheran church was listened to by large
and deeply-interested audience. DIR. Domer
gave historic outline of the method of treat.
ment of dead bodies among different people
and in different ages, sketching the history
of burying, embalming, and burning, and
arguing from the nature of things the i'm
practicability, to say the least, of cremation.
He described in picturesque colors the famous
cemeteries of old and modern times, and
closed as follows:
But why need / refer TO ancient cemeteries
or those far away as beautiful and as imag-
ing-forth Elysian fields, when near our own
city are some whose growing beauty already
compares well with that of any other in the
land or in the world? Bury or burn-which?
What answer shall we give? Burn? Why
What is the symbol you put before the heart
and soul as you permit strangers to take up
the departed from your families and to plunge
them into the glowing, hungry, angry
flames? The valley of Hinnom, Tophet, or
the Roman Tartarus, were they moro truly
symbOliCal of hell than the furnaces which
men want to build for our dead? Burn
Never Bury? Yes; in Elysian fields we
lovingly deposit those cherished ones. An
Elysium for their bodes-trees and flowers
friends and strangers to come in the calm
summer day tho place for children to come
and sing and play, and where all may feel
how religion soothes and sustains the aching
heart by making the place of sepulture a
little picture cl those fairer Elysian fields
which lie beyond the river, where are the
trees of life, the crystal sea, the evergreen
mountains, the city Of God, and the eternal
| home of the sauctied soul.
| If Homer aud lIesiod and Pindar in the
| old mythologles, had on them an impulse
| kindred to the supernatural and divine,
enabling them TO dream Of the abodes of tho
blessed in another world as they did and If
these iancies-if fancies you will call them
of the Homeric mythology run back in their
| genesis to the old ACherusian cemetery OF the
Nile, with its tabled beauty of trees and flowers;
or if all this, from beginning to end, be only
NEUROLOGICAL painting, and so these ismous
bsrds OF antiquity found occasion for
blending the condition of the blessed IN the
far away happy islands with the Dorate
beauty Of art and religion with Il laces
whore their bodies twere sleopin how
much moro shall we, whose faith I'm illu-
mination from the cross of Christ I'D the
hill tops of Heaven, whose fai,l thus
| illumined finds sacred imagery in AL the
beautiful facts and tho laws of tn natural
world, and decisive iOreshadOwngs ofa blisslul
realm for the hearts that have longed and
ached for an immortal cline. How much
moro shall the followers of Him, who is "thC
resurrection and tho life,n feel inclined t.
make the places Of the dead, not furnace
fires, but gardons-Elysian ihelds--whorC
easily flow out into the satisfaGtions ant
peace of u faith that looks through these oyel
into the brighter gardens, the paradises o
| God, where souls are forever ut rest.