The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1888-09-08
OUR BARBAROUS FUNERAL CUSTOMS
BY John SNYDER.

the apparent harmony in which civiliza-
ton and barbarism live together in the
same social household. The best Illus
tration of society is fruit which has been
partly hidden by thick foliage and is
found to be dead ripe on one side and
sour and green on the other. Among
the ancient Greeks, for instance, could
be seen, perhaps, the ripest and most
perfect intellectual state ever found
among any people and yet upon the
same bough with their culture grew the
rankest, crudest superstitions. The cul-
ture did not modify the superstition; the
superstition did not stain or discolor the
culture. The two forces sometimes de-
veloped together in the same mind
without bearing the slightest vital rela-
ton to each other.
In modern civilization the same
strange state of things exists. In fact,
the modern man, while he is SO richly
equipped with ell-ordered knowledge,
and dominated by the scientific spirit,
is even more conspicuously inconsistent
in his intellectual life than was the an
cient. He carries about with him a
variety of antique notions, which can
no more be assimllated by his mental
constitution than the standard goat of
the American humorist is able to find
nutriment in the shreds of obsolete pos
tiers and the fragments of tomato cans
for which he is popularity supposed to
entertain an unaccountable preference.
These innutritious opinions simply lie
in his m sntal stomach undigested, and
yet cause no conscious symptoms OF
intellectual indigestion. OF course
these phenomena are most constantly
and conspicuously displayed in mans
religious experience. While there is
no higher quality OF mind than rever-
ence, yet reverence is often the most
stubborn Stumbling block in the path
of progress. What we may call the
minds selective instinct is constantly
at work among mans secular opinions,
discarding some and improving others.
But this instinct is generally warned off
the premises of his religious ideas. In
that realm, prejudices, childish prepos-
sessions, obsolete ethics, vulgar super
stitions, and scientific absurdities often
seem to have an equal and sacred right
of citizenship. Absolutely inconsistent
and mutually destructive beliefs lie side
by side in many mans creed, like the
lion and the lamb of sacred prophecy.
These outgrown beliefs are practically
innocuous, because they rarely step
over the threshold of a mans creed
into the busy domain of his actual life.
But there are forms of superstition
which insist upon intruding into the
daylight of our modern social life, and
balefully affecting our health, comfort,
and happiness. Among these, that un
lovely brood of barbaric survivals which
surround the prevailing methods of dis
posing of the dead is surely the most
pernicious and indefensibie. We have
outgrown the hideousness of hired
mutes and mourners and the profess
sional distractions of the Oriental
clothes-te -tearers but the funeral customs
which still remain with US are incon-
sstent alike with good taste, intelligent
and spiritual religion. There
are religious customs which naturally
survive in the imagination long after
they have faded from the worship and
social customs which survive in courtesy
when they are no longer defensible in
social economics. The cults of ancient
Greece and Rome were many of them
so beautiful that it is not strange that |
when driven from their native home in
religion, they should have found well |
come refuge in the exquisite and airy |
palace of poetry. But what we call, in
satire, "Christian burial"
is not only condemned by sane religion
and rational sanitary science; it is
without those elements of the beautiful |
the graceful, the poetic, by which it can
justify itself to the imagination. 1t seems
to represent, not the sweet and trustful
of an ancestral faith, but
the gloom and chill of an inherited de-
spair. If we could imagine another
Pandora, from whose jeweled box of
life the winged Hope alone had fled,
we should have its fittest symbol. Chris
tianity began its triumphant career
holding in It's hand one clear, luminous
doctrine-that of the I'M
mortality of the soul. Whether tie
New Testament does or does not teach
mans natural Immortality may be in
dispute but it certainly teaches that
the Christian believer shall dwell with
Christ in everlasting glory. No branch
of the church has ever doubted that.
This conviction exercised an influence
upon the motives and conduct of prim-
tive Christians almost unequaled in its
depth and intensity in the history of
religion. Men and women became
even frantically in love with death. The
silent and unbrldged river seemed to
those early believers all afush with the
sunlight of the Eternal City. Dying
was but "departlng to be with Christ"
The joyous expectation of that presence
cancelled all the pain and tears of
martyrdom. Can we realize that from
the root OF such a faith as this, and
among a people who claim to hold that
faith, could have sprung the ugly and
repelent growths which flourish in the
Christian Church today? Read in
modern chamber of death Paul's ex-
ultant outcry of victory over the grave,