Page images
PDF
EPUB

Quakers have discarded all parade at their funerals. When they die, they are buried in a manner singularly plain. The corpse is deposited in a plain coffin. When carried to the meeting-house or grave-yard, it is attended by relations and friends.. These have nothing different at this time, in their external garments, from their ordinary dress. Neither man nor horse is apparelled for the purpose. All pomp and parade, however rich the deceased may have been, are banished from their funeral-processions. The corpse at length arrives at the meetinghouse *. It is suffered to remain there in the sight of the spectators. The congregation then sit in silence, as at a meeting for worship. If any one feel himself induced to speak, he delivers himself accordingly : if not, no other rite is used at this time. process of time the coffin is taken out of the meeting-house, and carried to the grave. Many of the acquaintance of the deceased, both Quakers and others, follow it. It is at length placed by the side of the grave. A solemn silent pause immediately takes

It is sometimes buried without being carried there.

2

In

place.

place. It is then interred. Another shorter pause then generally follows.

These pauses are made, that the " spectators may be more deeply touched with a sense of their approaching exit, and their future state." If a minister or other person, during these pauses, have any observation or exhortation to make (which is frequently the case), he makes it. If no person should feel himself impressed to speak, the assembled persons depart. The act of seeing the body deposited in the grave is the last public act of respect which the Quakers show to their deceased relations. This is the whole of the process of a Quaker-funeral.

SECTION II.

Quakers use no vaults in their burying-groundsRelations sometimes buried near each other, but oftener otherwise-They use no tomb-stones or monumental inscriptions-reasons for this disuse -but they sometimes record accounts of the lives, deaths, and dying sayings of their ministers.

THE Quakers, in the infancy of their institution, were buried in their gardens or orchards,

7

orchards, or in the fields and premises of one another. They had at that time no grave-yards of their own. And they refused to be buried in those of the church, lest they should thus acknowledge the validity of a human appointment of the priesthood, the propriety of payment for gospellabour, and the peculiar holiness of consecrated ground. This refusal to be buried within the precincts of the church was considered as the bearing of their testimony for truth. In process of time, they raised their own meeting-houses, and had their respec tive burying-places. But these were not always contiguous, but sometimes at a distance from one another.

The Quakers have no sepulchres or arched vaults under ground for the reception of their dead. There has been here and there a vault, and there is here and there a gráve with sides of brick; but the coffins containing their bodies are usually committed to the dust.

I may observe also, that the Quakers are sometimes buried near their relations, but more frequently otherwise. In places where the Quaker-population is thin, and

VOL. II.

D

the

[ocr errors]

the burial-ground large, a relation is buried next to a relation if it be desired. In other places, however, the graves are usually dug in rows, and the bodies deposited in them, not as their relations lie, but as they happen to be opened in succession, without any attention to family-connections. When the first grave in the row is opened and filled, the person who dies next is put into that which is next to it; and the person who dies next, occupies that which is next to the second *. It is to many an endearing thought, that they shall lie after their death near the remains of those whom they loved in life. But the Quakers in general have not thought it right or wise to indulge such feelings. They believe that all good men, however their bodies may be separated in their subterraneous houses of clay, will assuredly meet at the resurrection of the just.

The Quakers also reject the fashions of the world, in the use of tomb-stones and

* By this process a small piece of ground will be longer in filling, no room being lost, and the danger and disagreeable necessity of opening graves, before the bodies in them are decayed, is avoided.

monumental

monumental inscriptions. These are generally supposed to be erected out of respect to the memory or character of the deceased. The Quakers, however, are of opinion that this is not the proper manner of honouring the dead. If you wish to honour a good man who has departed this life, let all his good actions live in your memory. Let them live in your grateful love and esteem. So cherish them in your heart, that they may constantly awaken you to imitation. Thus you will show, by your adoption of his amiable example, that you really respect his memory. This is also that tribute, which, if he himself could be asked in the other world how he would have his memory respected in this, he would prefer to any description of his virtues, that might be given by the ablest writer, or handed down to posterity by the ablest monument of the sculptor's art.

But the Quakers have an objection to the use of tomb-stones and monumental inscriptions for other reasons. For, where pillars of marble, abounding with panegyric and decorated in a splendid manner, are erected to the ashes of dead men, there is a danger lest,

D 2

« PreviousContinue »