24 



no prophet to tell that when one had exploded the rest would 

 follow suit. We have the explosives amongst us, it is only a 

 question of time ; their discharge is not likely to be so harmless as 

 that at Woolwich. 



JS'ow, these being the facts of the case, what are the objections 

 to the remedy proposed, the return to the old practice of cremation. 

 There is, first, the religious objection, which I can hardly discuss 

 here, but which is an objection so utterly irrational and based on 

 such a material conception, that it really demands no discussion. 

 Granted that the early Christians found in the practice of burial 

 a protest against the idea of anniliQation, a protest in favour of 

 a resuiTection, it would seem that they were designed to give in 

 their deaths an evidence of the fact that resurrection depended 

 on no such material conception. The old martyrs, instead of 

 preserving their bodies, gave them to be eaten by the beasts, 

 or consumed by the fire. If any were certain of that future 

 life to which we most confidently look, then were they. But if 

 for the maintenance of the doctrine as an article of faith, if as a 

 condition of their future existence, it were necessary that the 

 empty shell should be preserved, then they who are most certain 

 of life have least certainty of it. Incorporated into the bodies 

 of the beasts which devoured them, or scattered as were their 

 ashes over the earth, they have lost their title-deeds, if the poor 

 remnants of mortality are the title-deeds of future existence. 

 The argument is not worth pursuing. For if you carry out the 

 thought of what becomes of men when they are burned, you 

 would find that nature does in a slower way what the lions and 

 the fire did more quickly. The earth decomposes the bodies, 

 and they are taken up into grass and trees, which again are 

 decomposed into other vegetable pabulum, and are incorporated 

 into the bodies of other animals, and eventually into those of man. 

 But even if the actual preservation of the carcase were necessary, 

 in no case is such the general rule. The future world would be 

 an aristocracy or plutocracy, for only those who have the privilege 

 of vaults and brick graves, could be at aU certain of a future 

 The common grounds are allowed to be disturbed every fourteen 

 years, and therefore in most churchyards the remains are hopelessly 

 commingled. 



