CONSECRATED GROUND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."'
you allow me, as a perplexed Nonconformist, to ask through your columns a question about "consecrated ground ?" What is the reason why in these days pious and intelligent Churchmen attach apparently such importance to the consecra- tion of the mere soil of their graveyards ? Of old, in ages of strife and violence, the awe which surrounded consecrated things and places protected them from violation, and the cause of order and civilisation was largely served by it. There can be no doubt, too, that consecration was supposed to be a protection against the demons, to whose ravages we poor outcasts beyond the sacred pale were held to be peculiarly obnoxious. It would be an insult to suppose that this superstition survives in the pions and intelligent persons to whom I refer. But I should be thankful for information as to the real advantages which they are supposed to gain. Do they imagine that those whose re- mains lie in consecrated ground enjoy any privileges which we poor exiles miss, who lie in the profane ground on the other side of the path ? Do Churchmen who are buried at sea rest un- easily in the depths ? Once, we Nonconformists used to be consigned by charitable Churchmen to the "uncovenanted mercies of God." The uncharitable and the weak brethren of the high Ritual school would not allow ns so much. But we always felt, with much composure, that we had a rich portion even in the uncovenanted mercies of a God who is love. But we hear little of these uncovenanted mercies now. Let ns hope that they have passed, not from Churchmen's lips only, but from their minds and hearts.
It is time that the fiction of " consecrated earth " should follow them,—as if Christ had not consecrated every clod. It is strange, indeed, that Christian Churchmen should be so eager thus to entrench their graves from chance contact with the body of a Christian Nonconformist, when a chance tomb in a garden was the scene both of the 'burial and the resurrection of their Lord. I am persuaded that Churchmen do not fully appreciate the measure in which, by persisting in attaching these utterly un- substantial, and, I might add cruel, distinctions to Christianity, they cause the infidel to blaspheme, and hinder the work of Christ's Gospel in the world.—I am, Sir, &c.,
J. BALDWIN BROWN.
[I8 it true, that most Churchmen are eager " to entrench their graves from chance contact with the body of a Christian Non- conformist ? " We imagined that " most Churchmen " were in favour of the Burial Act, which gives Nonconformists the right of burying in Churchyards, even using their own service.—ED. Spectator.]
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