Puslapio vaizdai
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sibility on the Church, offers no prayers, demands no support from the Law, and leaves friends, relatives and men generally in that vacuity of mind induced by universal negation.

But if the people had their choice, they would doubtless prefer a system which should possess efficiency and utility. All the offices of the Church were originally so framed as to possess this efficacy and utility unassailable by aristocracy. Man, at his birth, was received into the world by a clergyman of the parish, who took down his name and the names of the father and the mother. But the aristocracy, in 1812, deprived the people of this Right of Birth by the Statute commonly called "Rose's Act" (Statute 52 George III. c. 146.) Marriage was an individual Right proceeding upon the Jus Matrimoni of the Roman Law; but the aristocracy deprived the people of it in 1752 by the Statute commonly called "Walpole's Act" (Statute 26 George II. c. 33,) whereupon, in 1790, a Rector was transported for 14 years at the age of 63, for having solemnized a lawful marriage prohibited by this Statute. Confession was an act possessing efficacy in the world, which might be used at the discretion of an individual; thus in Shakespeare's Play of Richard II., Mowbray says to John of Gaunt

"For you, my noble lord of Lancaster,
Once did I lay in ambush for your life,

A trespass that doth vex my grieved soul;

But 'ere I last received the Sacrament

I did confess it; and exactly begged

Your grace's pardon, and I hope I had it."

showing that the use of the Office had effectively reconciled each party with his own self-esteem. Extreme unction asserts its own efficacy, and may possibly have drawn away the attention of the people from the absence of funeral rites. There is no reason to suppose that speculative theology or controversial divinity would sway the decision of the people, if they now had the power to decide for themselves in the question between burial and cremation; for alas! it is difficult to reconcile with the teaching either of St. Augustine, or of Bishops, or of any Independents, the faintest probability that the millions on millions now forming the other world are admitted to salvation; and, if not, what then? The new Testament does not explicitly recommend, either for their own benefit or the benefit of the living, that those shall be eternally abandoned by their friends, and the State does not provide that their souls shall be left in peace. It is far more likely, therefore, that the people, without disturbing the question of salvation with which alone the New Testament is supposed to be occupied, would, if they now had the power, entertain the question whether, in the great majority of cases of saints or sinners unknown, burial or cremation be the more desirable for the general well-being of the souls of their departed relatives. Proceeding on these grounds, instinct, reason, and experience seem to point in favour of

Cremation; and it remains to be seen whether there is sufficient energy of action left in the people to enable them to choose that course which is best for their own welfare.

PHILOSOPHY,

ITS PURPOSE

AND PLACE,

BY

J. WHITELEY.

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