in the next we shall consider that of triumph and of glory. Let us observe however, in conclusion, that we have here presented to us another illustration of the great fact that the truth of God is mighty and must prevail. For twenty-five years the strong arm of power was exerted in this island to crush that truth, but it was exerted in vain. During these long and weary years, according to the edicts of the Queen, no one was allowed to meet for worship, to pray to the true God, to invoke Christ's name, or to read the Scriptures, or any Christian book. Yet religious ordinances were more or less observed in secret; in secluded villages, in the recesses of the forests, in caves, and in rice holes, worship was occasionally offered; the emblems of Christ's death were partaken of, and those who joined their communion were received by baptism on confession of their faith. Leaves and small portions of the Holy Scriptures were carefully treasured up as the most precious of possessions; something of a very simple yet Scriptural system of discipline and Church order was maintained; and those of their number who were apt to teach and exhort were gradually recognized as pastors and elders amongst them. It is a remarkable testimony to the power and purity of the life and belief of the persecuted Church that during this long period of trial no serious error, either of doctrine or practice, sprung up in their midst. The constant study of the Word of God, almost their only book, and the gracious influence of the Spirit of God, were sufficient to preserve them from mistakes and errors in all directions. The trial of their faith, to use the words of the Apostle Peter, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it was tried with fire, was found unto praise and honour and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

METHODS OF INTERMENT.

"What if thou shalt fall

Unnoticed by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years-matron and maid,
The bowed with age, the infant, in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age, cut off-
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those who, in their turn, shall follow them."

THE influence of Christianity upon burial customs has been more indirect than direct. The Jew and the Egyptian continued to embalm their dead after becoming Christians as before; the converted Buddhist or Brahminist continued to burn his deceased relatives; the

believing New Zealander buried his dead in a sitting posture, as also did believing individuals of other tribes and nations; and in the British Isles our funeral customs are not radically affected by our religious beliefs-the Irish still have their "wake," or its equivalent, the Scotch their "lye-wake," and the English their feast or social entertainment.

And this is what a priori we might have expected. Christianity was not intended to directly alter such social customs-many of which, and all of which in some respects, were to be admired and were worthy of continuance, being the outgrowth of national character, and consequently adapted to the peoples among whom they obtained. But the indirect influence of Christianity on burial customs has been great. Those practices which were inconsistent with its principles and truths-as intoxication, irreverence, abuse of the body, cruelty, immolation-it has quietly abolished, or is quietly abolishing. Christianity favours hope, faith, love, and light; it teaches us that the dead are to live in an exalted state of glory; it offers peculiarly precious consolations to the bereaved souls of men ;— consequently, while human affection is quickened by Christian truth, and must have its voice in the matter of burial arrangements, it is also hallowed and sanctified, so that it shrinks from gloomy, dark symbols of a dark faith and a hopeless sorrow, and turns with radiant eyes to the more cheering symbols of an eternally bright future as revealed in the Christian faith.

Some people love to think of the dead-to think all the more affectionately of them when they are dead than when they are alive. In the dim distance the lives of the departed are as

"The measure of a blessed hymn,

To which our hearts could move;
The breathing of an inward psalm,
A canticle of love."

Sir Walter Scott said, speaking of his wife, "We speak freely of her whom we have lost." And the Priest in Wordsworth's "Brothers," pointing to the churchyard where "neither head nor footstone, plate of brass, cross-bones or skull" marks where the dead are laid, says to Leonard, in justification of the peculiarity—

"We have no need of names and epitaphs;

We talk about the dead by our firesides.

But others, who think no less affectionately of the dead, feel less disposed to talk about them, as Prof. Wilson, who, speaking of the departed, says, " Names never escape our lips, nor others' lips in our presence."

These peculiarities of mind and emotion influence considerably the rites of burial. A deep, absorbing affection may exist where there are no trappings of woe, no plumed hearses, no frantic mourners ; but, as a rule, mankind gauge affection for the dead by the number and costliness of the rites of burial. The sincere heart does not like to keep to itself its warm affection; it would rather manifest it in some way. If we believe, as Wordsworth has expressed it

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:"

Or if our soul says to itself,

"I come from far;

I'll rest myself, O world! awhile on thee,
And half in earnest, half in jest, I'll cut
My name upon thee, pass the arch of Death,
Then in a stair of stars go up to God;"

If we thus believe, we can hardly show too many honours to the remains of the highly endowed and departed spirit. May we not say that much of the costly pageantry of our funerals is but our poor human tribute to the transcendent glory of the released spirit— a tribute which ever struggles adequately to represent the majesty of our belief?

But a large margin of that costly pageantry must, after all is said, be ascribed to other and lower motives. The most reserved in the matter of show like the public to credit them with a deep affection for the departed. Then funeral customs which have grown into our national life and form a part of it, demand from everyone a certain measure of obeisance. Besides which, no one likes to be thought niggardly, and it is generally by the conduct of men at such public appearances as christenings, marriages, and funerals, that we judge men to be either generous or parsimonious.

Acting upon these and such-like secondary motives at funerals in England has given rise to a large amount of inconsistency and insincerity; so much so, that there is in the present day a growing dissatisfaction in every honest mind with the gloom, costliness, and inconvenience of our funeral system. Why, it is said, should there be dull undertakers, trying and failing to look solemn, with black hatbands which have done service round the neighbourhood for years, and with their black-plumed hearses and black coaches with black horses? Why should there be a costly coffin, and mourners dressed in costly black crape or silk? Why should money be expended upon the dead which is needed for the living, and which cannot be spent without involving the living in difficulties for some time afterwards? People the most careful of money before the death of their relative will become the most improvident after his death. The sick man, denied in many cases the advice and the luxuries which might have prolonged or even saved his life, is suddenly, after his death, honoured with all that wealth, carefully saved or recklessly borrowed, can purchase.

The daily papers have recently published many protests against this culpable extravagance of sorrow. Certain individuals, carrying their protests into practice, have made courageous efforts to reform our funeral customs. Some have boldly dispensed with black kid gloves, black hatbands, scarfs and dresses, black hearses, horses and plumes, and they have taken their dead to their last resting-place in ordinary clothes in an ordinary carriage or carriages. Some have left a memorandum to be opened immediately after death, containing instructions to the effect that as soon as death is certain the body is

to be laid to rest in the simplest manner possible, without "the pagan gloom and odious parade of our ordinary funeral customs"; a procedure which every gentleman and lady in this country who wishes our funeral customs to be reformed may adopt. Some have elected to be "cremated," or burned, as the late Lady Dilke. Another lady has given orders to be buried in a wicker basket, that she might as soon as possible turn into daisies. And a gentleman proposes that every dead body be carried out to sea and there buried, a process which would have the following advantages': "The cost would be little, the mode reverent, the effect sanitary, the condition natural, Scripture would be satisfied, and the philosophers [and the fishes] contented."

Several reforms have been advocated of late, which, if adopted, would amount almost to a revolution in the city of the dead. Chief amongst these reforms is that of cremation, or burning the dead, advocated thirty years ago by Lord Essex, and in the present day by Sir Henry Thompson, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, and others. By this system a furnace is provided, heated to an intense heat, into which the body, after certain funeral rites have been performed, is introduced. The whole body, including the bones, is in a comparatively short space of time reduced to ashes, which are collected together and put into an urn, and may be preserved by the family of the deceased. This reform is advocated chiefly on sanitary grounds. But we think it very improbable that the English nation will ever adopt this reform. As a method of burial it is doomed until we are educated either into a brutal indifference to the bodies of men, or into an unhealthy horror of sentimentalism. The theological ob. jection to cremation, urged by the Bishop of Lincoln, viz., that the burning of the dead is inconsistent with and jeopardises the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, we do not think has any weight, being equally applicable to every mode of burial, for cremation simply does more rapidly what the forces of nature do more slowly.

Another method is that advocated by Mr. Seymour Haden. His method is to dispense with coffins or air-tight boxes, and adopt, instead, wicker-baskets without lids, the body being filled in with fragrant herbs and flowers, like the Greeks, who buried in a wickerwork coffin, and considered it a bad omen not to undergo decomposition quickly. The chief advantages of this system are:-That the action of the air and earth would be so rapid on bodies so buried as to prevent the poisoning of either the atmosphere or the water in or near our large towns that there would be no outrage on either sentiment or religion; and that there would be no room for excessive expenditure, as burial would have to take place within six and thirty hours.

Whatever reforms of our burial system may or may not be adopted the sanitary question is one of immense importance. Regard for the health of the living must control to some extent private wishes, and even the dictates of sentiment and religion. Government has rightly closed graveyards in the midst of our large towns, and corporations are rightly building extensive cemeteries in the suburbs; but the growth of towns in these days is so rapid that what yesterday was a suburb to-day becomes the nucleus of a thriving community. The

question, therefore, comes home to us— s-How shall we so bury our dead as neither to interfere with the health and comfort of the living, nor violently shock the religious convictions and personal preferences of the relatives and friends of the deceased? This problem as yet remains unsolved. It would be every way beneficial to us as a people could we agree to adopt some simple mode of interment. But I suppose, whatever system is adopted, that some will be carried to their graves with much pomp and many honours, while others will be simply taken there with few honours and no pomp at all; that for some tears will stain the pathway to the grave, while others will be interred with ill-concealed satisfaction, being either poor, or perhaps paupers whom "nobody owns." Alas! that the dust of men should be be classified, and cemeteries themselves become the badges of rival faiths. The British Government in India has abolished the law which doomed the widow to be burned with her deceased husband; but it is still the custom in that country for the dead to be burned. In China various articles are consumed at funerals, in the belief that they are transformed into some corresponding reality in another world for the use of the spirit, and a roll of gilded paper, supposed to represent money, is placed under the head of the dead body in the grave, for the use of the departed spirit. The Chinese provide coffins long before they expect to use them. A son has been known to sell himself for a slave thirty years before his father's death in order to purchase for him an ornamental coffin: indeed, the father becomes as a God, and religious ceremonies are performed at his grave for generations. This reminds me of Mary Broomfield, who died 80 years of age, and on whose tombstone in Macclesfield Churchyard it is recorded: "The chief concern of her life for the last 20 years was to order and provide for her funeral. Her greatest pleasure was to think and talk about it. She lived many years on a pension of 9d. a week, and yet saved £5, which at her own request was laid out on her burial." Buddha sometimes condescends to be present at the burial of Chinese priests, when propitiatory offerings are made to him, including a feast of good things. But Buddha, not being corporeally present, the attendants feast themselves instead, Buddha getting all the credit of the disappearance of the provisions. Among the Chinese, whose burial customs have not changed for 2000 years, burial is delayed a long time, till Fung-Shuie, or the wind-and-water god, has been consulted as to the site of the grave, the body meanwhile being laid in a cemetery. The veneration of

the Chinese for the dead, however, is matched by the Indians of Natchez, who place their dead in a coffin of reed and supply them with food regularly. The bones are at last gathered together and placed in a funeral temple.

In Japan the body is put into a tube-shaped coffin in a sitting posture, and is preceded in the funeral procession by torch-bearers and priests, the latter carrying their sacred books and incense, and by a crowd of servants carrying lanterns, umbrellas, and strips of paper inscribed with sacred sentences, hung on bamboo poles. The coffin is followed by the male friends and acquaintances of the deceased, and behind these troop the female portion, each in her own norimon or palanquin, attended by servants. And so they reach the