380 ^y^sconsi7l Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



secular society; while the name convent, that is coming together, 

 bespeaks their imion in sacred services. Those '^rho live sep- 

 arate from each other are hermits, literallv dwellers in a desert. 

 Priest, an abridgment of presbyter, is Greek for elder. Clergy 

 signifies lot^ or portion, they being viewed as the Lord's own, 

 his portion or lot. Bishop is overseer, a name whose connection 

 with its adjective is obscured by changes in spelling. To make 

 this connection clear we must spell one T\x)rd e-bishop-al, or the 

 other word — piscop. The word episcopate must o\Vie its origin 

 to this feeling of ambiguity or doubt as to the connection of noun 

 and adjective. In parochial the elements are almost the same 

 as in neighbor, which is nigh-dweller. Its noun is parish, which 

 is Greek for near one's house. Crucial is a third specimen of 

 w^ords like parochial and episcopal where the adjective's connec- 

 tion with its noun is not obvious. It comt?s from cross which 

 was the shape of ancient guide-posts at the parting of ways, and 

 so gives name to crucial tests. They show us the Wiay to go at 

 points of divergence. 



It is as true now ds, in David's days tliat "there is but a step 

 between us and death," but no age has been so careful as ours 

 to put out of sight the grand memento mori. We ape the bird 

 who dodges hunters by hiding her head under her wing. In- 

 tramural interments have become criminal. But in early ages 

 interments were made, if not in churches, as near them as pos- 

 sible, so that every church-yard became a burial-ground. Ceme- 

 tery is etymologically a sleeping-place, and by Greek usage came 

 to mean a bed ix>om for transient guests. It acquired the mean- 

 ing of burial-ground only after the advent of Christianity and 

 thanks to the !N^ew Testament view of death as a sleep. The 

 radical sense of coffin is a basket (as is clear from Wyclif), Matt, 

 xix. 20. Funeral is what is done to a corpse; obsequies means 

 f ollomng it to the grave. Dirge is the first word in an antiphon 

 in the office of the dead \^nhich begins "Dirige (from which dirge 

 is contracted), Dirige, Domine," "Direct, O Lord!" Ps. v. 8. 

 Requiem is Latin for rest, the first word in a burial ritual which 

 begins "Requiem eternam dona eis !" "Rest eternal grant 

 them !" So it is said in Hamlet concerning Ophelia, 



