260 
I 
W. H. GRIBBLE. 
Gnd exposed to theaternating influences of excessive moisture 
and a burning sun. No disinfectant is used either in the 
coffin or in the vault, and, to make matters worse, most of the 
cemeteiies are overfilled and located in the heart of the city. 
What a picture for the contemplation of sanitarians ; and these 
methods are those of vaunted Christian burial. Christian, 
indeed; why Christian ? religion has no more to do with the 
disposal of the dead than it has with sewerage or any other 
sanitary measure. Earth-burial seems to have become the 
custom about the fourth century, and whether adopted by the 
so-called Christians to distinguish their religious sect, or be¬ 
cause the body of Christ was not cremated, is to us in the 
light of the nineteenth century of little importance; it is a 
question that concerns only the living, and shall we, as reason¬ 
able beings, continue to follow a custom blindly, hoping that 
we shall not be harmed ? or shall we so dispose of our dead 
fiiends ? leaving the living none the worse for their having 
died. 
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, is the requiem to us all. We 
must under go oxydation—we have no choice in the matter; 
but we may choose whether we prefer the slow, loathesome, 
offensive process as carried for fifty to a hundred years after 
the mode of earth-burial, or the quick, clean and beautiful 
method of incineration—being reduced to ashes in an hour in 
the rosy glow of a crematorium. 
Thiid Cremation.—Cremation is simply a clean process 
of accomplishing in an hour what requires years and years by 
eai th-burial, without the gloom and offensiveness of the grave, 
01 its dangerous accompaniments. It is simply nature’s 
method of oxydation hastened and purified ; yet it is strange 
how little it is understood, some even speaking of it as the 
new-fangled method, while many suppose the body to be 
actually burned in a fire. In reference to the antiquity of 
cremation or earth-burial, early Greek literature gives neither 
the piefeience; both are spoken of, cremation seeming to be 
reserved for the noted. 
In the story of the Trojan wars, we are told that the great 
chiefs were incinerated so that their ashes could be returned 
