368 
PARK AND CE/AETERY 
ful awakening, which should be sacredly preserved in undisturbed 
entirety from age to age until the resurrection morn, when Ga- 
briel’s trumpet should sound and these innumerable graves should 
render up their long-cherished and unviolated dead. 
The present scientfic age has dispelled both of these doc- 
trines as tender illusions, for which the wish had been father to 
the thought. We have now ceased to regard the remains of our 
deceased friends as having any particular significance except as 
reminders of their living counterparts, and hence the preserving 
care of, and superstitious regard for these perishing, lifeless or- 
ganisms, which formerly was a sacred duty, has now become 
merely a traditional and an entirely irrational custom. It is to 
be hoped the day is not far distant when cremation, the only ra- 
tional disposition of the lifeless body, will be universally adopted 
in all civilized communities. 
Another beneficent result of the more general prevalence 
of scientific knowledge is that the laws of this present world are 
coming to be better understood and accepted as wise and good. 
It was no meaningless or flippant remark of Margaret Fuller’s 
when she said, “I accept the universe.” For ages it has been 
considered the righteous thing to reject this visible, objective 
universe as a miserable failure, a vale of tears, a kind of way sta- 
tion where we are forced to tarry for a time in painful prepara- 
tion for an endless existence in some other world, in which 
perpetual happiness and joy, or endless woe and torment were 
supposed to be prepared for all comers. 
Mow I do not care, as a scientific man, to commit myself 
for or against any theory of a future life, for the truth or falsity 
of which I have no sufficient evidence to enable me to formulate 
an opinion, but the absence of any decided views on this subject 
does not trouble me in the least, as I once supposed it would. 
What I cannot know I cannot be accountable for, and hence I 
choose to shape my course, and would wish all others to do the 
same, in accordance with the knowable things of this world 
rather than the unknowable, feeling satisfied that whatever the 
future has in store -‘no evil can happen to a good man in life or 
in death.” 
Assuming, therefore, that we may look upon death as a pro- 
duct of natural causes, the same as any other natural pheno- 
menon, and that these causes are found in the fixed, and as we 
believe the beneficent, laws of the universe, let us examine into 
it as we would into any other aspect of the workings of nature’s 
laws, to see whether or not it is the hideous monster it is com- 
monly represented. 
First we must remember that we must view it as a whole 
and not simply in its exceptional or most painful examples. 
Like any other law, if the conditions of its operation are com- 
plied with it must of necessity operate, whether its action is 
beneficent or injurious. So with fire, which was regarded by 
the ancient Greeks as the greatest gift of the gods to man, and 
yet it may be his most destructive enemy. In fact every law 
of nature, of which man has learned, may work evil as well as 
good if its operating conditions are ignored, and yet we call them 
all wise and beneficent, and thereby we accept the universe, with 
death included, as a good and wholesome world, when prop- 
erly understood. 
Probably the great argument in favor of death as a law of the 
universe, is that hereby only can the race make progress. With 
the ancient belief in a golden age when man was perfect and 
immortal, no improvement was possible and hence death was 
not a necessary condition, but with the newer and now prevalent 
view of the evolution of the human species, progress can only 
come with infinitesimal gains from generation to generation and 
all our superiority to our less progressive “poor relations” lies in 
this evolution through innumerable births and deaths. 
Prof. Fiske finds a very strong support in this doctrine of 
the “ascent of man” in the long period of infancy of the human 
species. How much this de veloping period of childhood is fos- 
tered and stimulated by the fear of the death of the child on the 
part of the parent, he does not indicate, but if death did not ex- 
ist we can all see how much this developing care of parents 
would be relaxed, and how the race might at once begin to de- 
generate. If death is then an essential condition of human pro- 
gress, it must be pronounced good and not evil, and it is therefore 
a friend and not an enemy of mankind. 
The subjective effect of this law on the individual is also most 
wholesome, when it is not regarded as an evidence of divine 
wrath or displeasure, or of an incomprehensible caprice. Remove 
it from the category of special providences, and it can be calmly 
viewed as the working out of. the effects of natural causes. It 
must be regarded at times, however, as an unfortunate, sad, and 
pitiful result of the operation of a most beneficent law. These 
are the cases of “untimely death,” to overcome which but stimu- 
lates the race, and which are rapidly being eliminated with 
the progress of science and the spread of its teachings. Even 
here death must still be regarded as the unexpected visit of a 
friend, and not as the stealthy stroke of an enemy. If we 
would all conscientiously contemplate the friendliness of death, 
not viewing it with fear and trembling as the great arch enemy 
of mankind, and as meanly stealing upon us as a thief in the 
night, but as coming quietly and in the most friendly and help- 
ful way, leading us into the great unknown from which we have 
nothing to fear if we are not afraid to Aw, then we would not 
only welcome it when it comes to us, but we would regard the van- 
ishing from mortal sight of our friends with a greater resignation 
and comfort. As a friend goes to a far country to live, as a 
loved daughter marries and leaves the home of her parents, as 
a child goes from its home to be educated, so should the bearing 
away of our loved ones by death be regarded. 
Yes, in some respects we may say this last journey has its 
consolations which the others lack. We all admit there are 
many things more to be dreaded than death, and so long as we 
live some of these may possibly come to us, but when our dear 
ones are once confided to the care of this last friend, we are cer- 
tain no further harm can come to them. 
It is one of the unaccountable facts that while death has 
always been so feared and dreaded by the well, it seems to be al- 
ways welcomed by the dying. The friendship for this unseen 
visitor then manifests itself, on the part of the passing spirit, and 
why then should we not also call Death our P'riend? Surely, 
in a very true sense, those departed souls are nearer to us after 
this vanishing from outward sight than when clothed in flesh and 
blood. Proximity of body is no proof of commingling spirits. 
When the outward body has passed away then we feel that we 
can po.ssess our friend entire, and our spiritual communion with 
the ideal and real friend is perfect and continuous, and nothing 
can now occur to break this perpetual bond and shaping influ- 
ence. 
The ever-present knowledge that death will come to us 
sooner or later is probably the greatest of all stimulants to noble 
endeavor. Were we certain of a continuous existence here we 
would always be inclined to delay action and await the develop- 
ment of events. As it is, we feel that no time must be lost or 
wasted — that the present is a’l that we are sure of, and that 
every passing moment must be consciously utilized to help com- 
plete the work of a life known to be short, and which may end 
at any moment. We are thus changed from indifferent 
drones to working members of the human hive, with the result 
that our own and future generations will receive some good 
thing or some added pleasure as a result of our having lived at all. 
We also thus develope our own personality, and if an im. 
mortal existence awaits us when the friend of all mankind calls 
upon us, we will be certain to receive in some form a further 
reward for our faithful services here. The blessings of death 
