It is a little difficult to write a critical notice of a funeral office,
simply because people's feelings are so much bound up in it that any
criticism seems a cruelty, and any interference seems an impertinence.
Round the open grave all controversy should be hushed, that no jarring
sounds may mingle with the sobs of the mourners, and no quarrels wring
the torn hearts of the survivors. Our criticism of this office, then,
will be brief and grave.
The opening verses strike us first as manifestly inappropriate:
"Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die;" yet the dead is
then being carried to his last home, and the words seem a mockery spoken
in face of a corpse. In the Fourth Gospel they preface the raising of
Lazarus, and of course are then very significant, but to-day no power
raises our dead, no voice of Jesus says to the mourners, "Weep not." The
second verse from Job is---as is well known--an utter mistranslation:
"without my flesh" would be nearer the truth than "in my flesh," and
"worms" and body are not mentioned in the original at all. It seems a
pity that in such solemn moments known falsehoods should be used.
The whole argument in the 15th ch of Corinthians is the reverse of
convincing. Christ is not the first fruits them that slept A dead man
had been raised by touching the bones of Ehsha (2 Kings xii). Elisha,
in his lifetime had raised the dead son of the Shunamite (2 Kings iv.);
Elijah, before him, had raised the son of the Widow of Zarephath
(2 Kings xvii.); Christ had raised Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus,
and the son of a widow. In no sense, then, if the Scriptures of the
Christians be true can it be said that Christ has become the first
fruits, the first begotten from the dead. "For since by man came death;"
but death did not come by man; myriads of ages before man was in the
world animals were born, lived and died, and they have left their
fossilised remains to prove the falsity of the popular belief. We notice
also that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." If this
be so, what becomes of the "resurrection of the flesh," spoken of in
the Baptismal and Visitation Offices? What has become of the "flesh and
bones" which Christ had after his resurrection and with which, according
to the 4th Article, he has gone into heaven? Cannot Christ "inherit the
kingdom of God"? It is hard to see how, in any sense, the resurrection
of Christ can be taken as a proof of the resurrection of man. Christ
was only dead thirty-six or thirty-seven hours before he is said to have
risen again; there was no time for bodily decay, no time for corruption
to destroy his frame: how could the restoration to life of a man
whose body was in perfect preservation prove the possibility of the
resurrection of the bodies which have long since been resolved into
their constituent elements, and have gone to form other bodies, and to
give shape to other modes of existence? People talk in such superior
fashion of the resurrection that-they never stoop to remember its
necessary details, or to think where is to be found sufficient matter
wherewith to clothe all the human souls on the resurrection morn.
The bodies of the dead make the earth more productive; they nourish
vegetable existence; transformed into grass they feed the sheep and the
cattle; transformed into these they sustain human beings; transformed
into these they form new bodies once more, and pass from birth to death,
and from death to birth again, a perfect circle of life, transmuted by
Nature's alchemy from form to form. No man has a freehold of his body;
he possesses only a life-tenancy, and then it passes into other hands.
The melancholy dirge which succeeds this chapter sounds like a wail of
despair: man "hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He
cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,
and never continueth in one stay." Can any teaching be more utterly
unwholesome? It is the confession of the most complete helplessness, the
recognition of the futility of toil. And then the agonised pleading: "O
Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour
deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death." But if he be
most merciful, whence all this need of weeping and wailing? If he be
most merciful, what danger can there be of the bitter pains of eternal
death? And again the cry rises: "Shut not thy merciful ears to our
prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and
merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge Eternal, suffer us not, at our
last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee." It is nothing but
the wail of humanity, face to face with the agony of death, feeling its
utter helplessness before the great enemy, and clinging to any straw
which may float within reach of the drowning grasp; it is the horror of
Life facing Death, a horror that seems felt only by the fully living and
not by the dying; it is the recoil of vigorous vitality from the silence
and chilliness of the tomb.
After this comes a sudden change of tone, and the mourners are told of
God's "great mercy" in taking the departed, and of the "burden of the
flesh," and they are bidden to give "hearty thanks" for the dead being
delivered "out of the miseries of this sinful world." Can anything be
more unreal? There is not one mourner there who desires to share in
the great mercy, who wants to be freed from the burden of the flesh, or
desires deliverance from the miseries of this world. Why should people
thus play a farce beside the grave? Do they expect God to believe them,
or to be deceived by such hypocrisy?
It is urged by some that the Church cannot have a "sure and certain hope
of the Resurrection to eternal life" as regards some of those whom she
buries with this service; and it is manifest that, if the Bible be
true, drunkards and others who are to be cast into the lake of fire, can
scarcely rise to eternal life at the same time, and therefore the Church
has no right to express a hope where God has pronounced condemnation.
The Rubric only shuts out of the hope the uhbaptized, the
excommunicated, and the suicide; all others have a right to burial at
her hands, and to the hope of a joyful resurrection, in spite of the
Bible.
We may hope that the day will soon come when people may die in England
and may be buried in peace without this cry of pain and superstition
over their graves. Wherever cemeteries are within reasonable distance
the Rationalist may now be buried, lovingly and reverently, without
the echo of that in which he disbelieved during life sounding over his
grave; but throughout many small towns and country villages the Burial
Service of the Church is practically obligatory, and is enforced by
clerical bigotry. But the passing knell of the Establishment sounds
clearer and clearer, and soon those who have rejected her services in
life shall be free from her ministrations at the tomb.
A COMMINATION OR DENOUNCING OF GOD'S ANGER AND JUDGMENTS AGAINST
SINNERS.
THIS service is too beautiful to be passed over without a word of
homage; the spectacle of the Church raving and cursing is too edifying
to be ungratefully ignored. "Brethren, in the primitive Church there was
a godly discipline that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood
convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance and punished in this
world, that their souls might be saved.... Instead whereof (until the
said discipline may be restored again, which is much to be wished), it
is thought good," &c. That is, in other words: "In days gone by, we were
able to bite, as well as to bark; now that our mouths are muzzled we
can only snarl; but, until the old power comes back, which is much to
be wished, let us, since we cannot bite, show our teeth and growl as
viciously as we can, so that people may understand that it is only the
power that is wanting, and not the will, and that, if we could, we would
torture and burn as vigorously as we curse and damn." And promptly
the priest begins with his curses, and all the people say Amen: what a
pretty sight--a whole church full of Christians with one consent cursing
their neighbours! Then comes an exhortation; as so many curses are
flying about we must take care of our heads: "Let us, remembering the
dreadful judgment hanging over our heads, and _always ready to fall upon
us_, return to our Lord God." Always ready to fall; but is God, then,
always lying in wait to catch us tripping, and crush us with his
judgments? Does he punish gladly, and keep his blow suspended, to fall
at the first chance our weakness gives him? If so, by no means let us
return to our Lord God, but let us rather try to put a considerable
distance between himself and us, and endeavour, like the prophet Jonah,
to flee from the presence of the Lord. "It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God: he shall pour down rain upon the
sinners, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest." And who made the
sinners? Who called them into the world without their own consent? Who
made them with an evil nature? Who moulded them as the potter the clay?
Who made it impossible for them to go to Jesus unless he drew them,
and then did not draw them? If God wants to pour fire and brimstone on
anybody, he should pour it on himself, for he made the sinners, and is
responsible for their existence and their sin. "It shall be too late to
knock when the door shall be shut; too late to cry for mercy when it
is the time of justice." How utterly repulsive is this picture of the
popular and traditional God: how black the colours wherein is painted
this Moloch; surely the artist must have been sketching a picture of the
devil, and by mistake wrote under it the name of God when he should have
put the name of Satan. If, however, we submit ourselves, and walk in his
ways, and seek his glory, and serve him duly--that is, if we acknowledge
injustice to be justness, and cruelty to be mercy, and evil to be
good--then we shall escape "the extreme malediction which shall light
upon them that shall be set on the left hand." On the whole, brave men
and women will prefer to do rightly and justly here, caring much about
serving man, and nothing about glorifying such a God, and leaving the
malediction alone, very sure that no punishment can befal a man for
living nobly, and that no fear need cloud the death-bed of him who has
made his life a blessing to mankind.
Of course, after all this preface, come cringing confessions of sin. The
51st Psalm leads the way, the congregation having by this time become so
thoroughly confused that they see no incongruity in saying that when
God has built the walls of Jerusalem, he will be pleased with burnt
offerings and oblations, and that "then shall they offer young bullocks
upon thy altar." As a matter of fact, they have no intention of offering
young bullocks at all--bullocks having become too useful to be wasted in
that fashion, but they have so thoroughly left the realm of common sense
that they have become unconscious of the absurdities which they repeat.
The gross exaggeration of the concluding prayers must be patent to
everyone; they are full of the hysteria which passes for piety. "We are
grieved and wearied with the burden of our sins," although most of the
congregation will forget all about the burden before they leave
the church: we are "vile earth and miserable sinners;" we "meekly
acknowledge our vileness." One longs to shake them all, and tell them
to stand up like men and women, instead of cringing there like cowards,
whining about their vileness. If they are vile, why don't they mend,
instead of saying the same thing every year? They should be ashamed to
tell God of their miserable condition year after year, when his grace
is sufficient for them, and they might be perfect as their Father in
heaven.
The Church in all this service reminds one of nothing so much as a
wicked old crone, who whines to the parson and scolds all the children.
In days gone by the old woman has been the terror of the village, and
her sturdy arm has been shown on many a black eye and bruised face;
now she can no longer strike, she can only curse; she can no longer
tyrannise, she can only scowl; her palsied tongue still mutters the
curses which her shrivelled arm can no longer translate into act, and in
her bleared eye, in her wrinkled cheeks, in her shaking frame, we read
the record of an evil youth, wherein she abused her strength, and we see
descending upon her the gloom of a dishonoured age, and the night of a
fathomless despair.