A hundred years ago
The Bishop of Manchester has made an original speech on the Burial question. He rose altogether out of trivialities about rights of interment, and asked whether interment could go on at all: 'Cemeteries are becoming not only a difficulty, an expense, and an inconvenience, but an actual danger.' Though himself greatly preferring burial, which, among other advantages, restores to the earth her fertility, he spoke of cremation as a system which might ultimately have to be adopted, and repudiated the notion that `any Christian doctrine could be affected by the method in which this mortal body is disposed of.' The Bishop's tone on this subject is admirable; but he wIl find, on inquiry, that the expense of really destroying a body is too great — in India, where cremation is the Hindoo rule, not one body in five hundred is destroyed by burning — and that the only practical alternatives are burial, or deposit in the sea. He will, too, we believe, be startled if he inquires into the effect which cremation would have on popular beliefs. The notion that if this body is totally destroyed, it cannot rise again, has a terribly strong hold upon the popular mind, in spite of every one's knowledge that the earth destroys as perfectly as fire.
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