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 primitive 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 unbridged river seemed to those early believers all aflush with the sunlight of the Eternal City. Dying was but "departing to be with Christ." The joyous expectation of that presence canceled 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 repellent growths which flourish in the Christian Church to-day? Read in a modern chamber of death Paul's exultant outcry of victory over the grave, which thrills and stirs the blood like the blare of a trumpet. The apostle's glad music is muffled by the raven feathers of funereal plumes. The black standard of death waves at the household door. The body is shrouded and coffined in the color of gloom. The windows are darkened. Men, women, and even little children are draped and veiled in black. Every adventitious aid is called in to make the scene as depressing in its influence as possible. The undertaker's ghastly art is exhausted to express, emblematically, the lowest depths of a hopeless bereavement. A half-century ago people used to cut into their tombstones the skull and cross-bones of the pirate's flag. They have abandoned this dreadful custom; but only because there is such a thing as fashion in tombstones, not because there has been much change in the sentiment that determines our funeral customs.

Candidly and fairly compare the burial customs of this enlightened Christian people with those of any savage or barbaric race that may be selected, and say wherein we have the advantage. Our customs are freed from elements of intentional cruelty. Our graves are not soaked with the blood of human sacrifice. Our widows are not expected to burn themselves with their dead husbands. That hideous survival of ancestral savagery, the hired mourner, is absent from our obsequies. But in their ability to express the cheerful and confident hope of a rational religious faith our funeral customs are surely as barbaric and as little

affected by our prevalent enlightenment as those of the least developed race of whom we have any knowledge. They symbolize simply the doubt, despair, agony, and gloom that shadow the grave. They express no comfort, breathe no consolation, suggest no hope, inspire no confidence. They simply represent the natural horror with which the healthful mind regards the thought of physical dissolution. This, of course, is the main article of impeachment of "Christian burial," that it is utterly out of harmony with the Christian religion.

But it is equally discordant with the teachings of a wholesome social economy. Without dwelling upon those sanitary aspects of the case to which scientific men are so earnestly calling attention, is it not true that, from the moment the man has passed beyond the reach of human help and care, his house of clay is made to become a burden upon the living? The orthodox Hebrews have a noble and simple method of disposing of their dead. The body is decently wrapped in linen, and put in the earth in a plain, unornamented coffin. They endeavor to express their conviction that death levels all distinctions of rank or wealth. But we often withhold the body from the grave till it has become a menace to health. Then we inclose it in a casket, the price of which would support a poor man's family for a year. Then we cover it from sight with ugly and tasteless floral decorations, often the offering of social vanity rather than of personal affection. And over its final resting-place we build a monument representing, not unfrequently, as much money as would build a modest hospital or endow a professorship in a university. It may be urged, in extenuation of this senseless extravagance, that these things represent labor, and that the outlay ultimately finds its way to the pockets of the poor man; and, in our present crude condition of social economics, this view of the case may furnish some color of justification for the expenditure. But do our excessively wealthy people ever think of the hurtful influence of this wastefulness upon the humble folk for whom they set the social fashions? Many a man spends at least one-sixth of his year's income upon a single funeral, and it is almost impossible, under the present condition of things, for one of the humbler class of wage-workers to bury a member of his family

without depriving of necessary comforts those who survive. An ordinary car-driver or hod-carrier must spend upon the simplest funeral the entire income of six or seven weeks' labor. He almost invariably spends nearly twice as much. He will struggle with poverty, he will rigidly economize, he will stint his family at the table, in school, and in society, but he will always be lavish in mortuary display. Economy seems like an insult to the dead. Some of the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church have made a commendable stand against this senseless and hurtful extravagance, but they cannot reach the root of the evil. Only the Protestant ministry can do that. For so long as the classes having wealth and social position continue to indulge in this sinful wastefulness, so long will they be largely responsible for the social barbarisms of a class who servilely copy and reproduce their follies and mistakes.

Another of the many crying evils that attend "Christian burial" is found in the unintentional but real cruelty which it inflicts upon those to whom death brings the nearest, sharpest pang. They used to have a custom in Philadelphia, and may have yet, of keeping the ugly white window-blinds, or "shutters," that disfigure their houses almost closed, from basement to attic, for a whole year following a funeral. One could see houses into which the light scantily struggled through these crevices, while from a score of windows fluttered the depressing ensigns of death, warning hope and joy from the thresholds. This cruel and senseless custom was kept up through the hottest and the coldest weather; and its effect in increasing the gloom and depression of death was all that the most enthusiastic believer in mortuary barbarism could desire. In my own city of St. Louis we have an ingenious method of prolonging the mental pain and physical discomfort of an interment which I think is happily confined to our locality. No matter what may be the season or the weather, it is the custom for all the attendants at a funeral to stand around a grave until the grave-diggers have put the last clod upon the coffin and given the mound of earth its final shape Many a time I have seen a delicate widow, heart-broken with bereavement, worn with night vigils, stand in the cemetery, under a winter sky and upon the chilled sod, for nearly an hour,

in obedience to this inexorable fashion, trembling with convulsive grief, until the last frozen clod had been added to the heap. For how much dangerous illness this cruel and senseless custom is responsible there is no method of computation.

There are certain aspects of "Christian burial" which have grown so discordant with our more intelligent forms of social life that they have become even ludicrous, and can, therefore, be most wholesomely treated with the caustic of ridicule. Among cultivated people their natural environment no longer exists. They are more or less distinctly recognized as survivals. The dignity and impressiveness they may have once possessed has passed away. The most conspicuous of these is covered and described by the comprehensive name of "mourning." I have heard a brilliant society belle sorrowing bitterly over the fact that, just as her most impressive costumes were prepared for a season's campaign, the demise of a distant relative made it necessary for her to "go into mourning "—a fact which had but the one compensating circumstance, that "black was becoming to her;" indeed this final and determining factor in the case often enlarges the pale of relationship, within the limits of which funereal fashion makes the assumption of "mourning" imperative. In all the large cities stores may be found where the mortuary expert can determine to a shade the style of dress that constitutes "full mourning," and where the length of a veil is solemnly regarded as expressive of what Mr. Mould termed "filial affection." There is "mourning jewelry," "mourning visiting cards,' "mourning stationery," "mourning etiquette;" and I knew of one gentleman who carried his loyalty to these "modes and shows of grief" to the extent of having the blue ribbons that adorned his nightgown solemnly replaced with black! But the ghastly humor reaches its climax in the contemplation of "halfmourning," or "second mourning." This symbolizes sorrow vanishing through the ministration of the milliner and the mantua-maker! It is an interesting but certainly not an edify. ing sight to see a blooming young widow pass through those various stages of grief which rigid etiquette demands, from the midnight gloom of costly crape, through the subdued twilight of "second mourning," back to the full daylight of gorgeous color.

These customs should be frankly characterized as barbarous, They are no more defensible from the standpoint of modern civilization and a rational religious faith than the ghastly humor of the Irish peasants' "wake." They are condemned by the spirit of Christianity and the canons of civilized taste, and nothing but a familiarity which has dulled and blunted our sensibilities prevents us from seeing them in their true light. But the appeal for their abolishment can be made effective only with the wealthy, the intelligent, and the cultivated. Among these classes this commendable effort of reform is already being made. A few months ago a gentleman died in my own city who was the beloved minister of a large Congregational church. He was conspicuous for his good works and his bright and cheerful religious faith. His wealthy congregation stood ready to spend lavishly for funereal display, but the sound judgment and pure taste of his wife prevailed. Into the church, where his hopeful words had often brought consolation to the sorrowing and hope to the bereaved, his coffin was brought, bearing a handful of bright flowers. No badges of "mourning" were displayed, no hideous crape added gloom to the place. Those who were nearest in blood and affection sat in their customary pews, attired as they were when last they heard his kindly voice proclaim the gospel of the soul's immortality. Everything spoke of a living faith, which instinctively shrank from the common symbols of despair and hopeless death. It was a true Christian burial.

The strong should bear the burdens of the weak. And only those who are strong in intelligence and knowledge can lift from the shoulders of the weak, the poor, and the ignorant the heavy burdens which have been laid upon them by a false reverence and a tender but mistaken affection.

JOHN SNYDER.

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