A cry from the tombs: or, facts and observations on the impropriety of burying the dead among the living, in various ages and nations / [James Peggs].

  • Peggs, James, 1793-1850
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A cry from the tombs: or, facts and observations on the impropriety of burying the dead among the living, in various ages and nations / [James Peggs]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    three appropriated for the ravages of death in a thousand years ? Let our cemeteries more closely approximate to those of the ancients. The author of Sylva remarks in his peculiar and original style, “ that the most ancient conditoria and burying places were in nemorous solitudes. The cave in Macpelah, purchased by the patriarch Abraham for Sarah, his own dormitory and family sepulchre, was conveyed to him with particular mention of all the trees and groves about it.—Gen. xxiii. 17. This is the very first precedent of conveying a purchase by a formal deed. Our blessed Sa¬ viour chose the garden sometimes for his oratory, and dying for the place of his sepulchre. And we do avouch for many weighty causes, that there are no places more fit to bury our dead in, than our gardens and our groves or any fields, where our beds may be decked and carpetted with verdant and fragrant flowers and trees and perennial plants—the most natural and instructive hieroglyphics of our expected resurrection and immortality.” The well known sentiment of the Roman is highly be¬ coming every Cfi ristian :—Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto. (I am a man ; nothing that relates to man¬ kind I think alien from me/ An American writer, upon this subject, Dr. Pascalis, very forcibly observes,—“ It is the duty of those who by their profession or study, obtain a greater share of knowledge on some points than their fellow citizens may possess, to remonstrate with them against practices that endanger their own safety, or which are con¬ trary to the well-being of the community at large.” The inhumanity to the sick and the dead witnessed in India, prepared the author to sympathize with every thing in the least similar in his native country. Perhaps some of his friends will be ready to smile when they hear the title and the subject of this pamphlet, but he doubts not that the most facetious and captious will soon become serious in its perusal, and tender their thanks for this exposure of a very crying and common evil. It is astonishing that this subject should be so generally overlooked. The “ graves of the common people,” are generally disturbed in a very few years ; but who cherishes the sentiment of Nehemiah to 66 the place of his father’s sepulchres ? ” * Who knows them or thinks of them after the lapse of a few years ? Shall these inhuman scenes continue to transpire at our very door, and no cry be lifted up on behalf of poor degraded human nature—no warning voice of the dangers to which health and life are exposed—no regret and indignation ex¬ pressed at the solemn farce which these evils render the * See a well written article in the G. B. Repository, 1840, pages 325, 328.