FUNERAL REFORM

Evening Star, Issue 20363, 20 December 1929, Page 11

FUNERAL REFORM

Tho conventional attitude toward death is discussed by Sir Edward Parry —judge, author, and dramatist—in a recently published volume of essays. He writes: “ I read with much pleasure an address of the Bishop of London, in which he told his hearers that he regarded death as one of the greatest Blessings we have, and asked them to think of tho state of the world to-dav if no one ever died. In his view such a state of things would be absolutely intolerable. I have long been of #ae bishop’s opinion about tho inercy of death. Slowly, like the grain -of mustard seed, the bishop’s idea will prevail. We have already done away with some of tho tawdry trappings of our funerals. If wo really accept the truth that death is a blessing we cahnot with any reason continue to show our sense of our friends’ blessedness through the medium of black feathers, black horses and hearses, and the undistinguished art of the obelisks and memorial sculptures that linger and decay in ouf churches and graveyards. For if death is a blessing, why these dismal graveyards with gratings and vaults, stone lids and headstones, tumbling this way and that amid tussocks of rank weeds? All this old world affection for knells and shrouds and mattocks and mould and worms was utterly unwholesome and evil. But whether the bishop’s message will sweep them put of the heart of man, where they have rankled for-so long, is more than doubtful. H© will have to persuade his clergy as well as their flocks to accept the truth he has so boldly expressed..’’