CREMATION.

Observer, Volume XXXII, Issue 21, 3 February 1912, Page 2

CREMATION.

"Wrong and Uncalled For." THERE is somehing amusingly medieval in the recent utterance of a Sydney cleric of high degree on the subject of cremation. He is an archbishop, and therefore his opinion will carry a considerable ■amount of weight with the people of hist flock. This archbishop, acco«(ding to. the cables this week, said his church was against cremation, which was "opposed to national sentiment and was irreligious and was not only not essential, but wrong and uncalled for." This is a jiecidedly clerical fashion of disposing of the subject. It is sufficient, apparently, to assert that it is irreligious ; no need to go to the trouble of showing why it is irreligious. One imagines the archbishop would have considerable difficulty in discovering such proof. As for national sentiment, it is not often that a clerical dignitary bases his case on national sentiment, and the fact that he ajlvances such a reason in support of his condemnation of cremation indicates that possibly he secretly feels his primary ground of objection, the religious one, is not altogether sound. • • » An oration against the practice of cremation is so rare now-a-days as to be quite refreshing. It takes one back to the jdear old days when they burned witches in England, and cut off men's noses and ears because they were so impious as to be Dissenters, ■and said prayers to holy wells, and did various other quaint and picturesque thingjs. Butt, the archbishop must know that cremation is no new thing. Many of our farback ancestors cremated their dead. The men of North Europe, more particularly the Norsemen, burned the bodies of their great men. What grander passing of the fleshly frame of man could there be than that of the funeral pyre, or the burning Viking-ship of the Norsemen ? The ancient Norsemen, however, didn't trouble themselves about sanitary considerations, which form our chief reason for cremation to-day. •m i •

There is undoubtedly a strong prejudice against the disposal of dead bodies by fire, but it is not quite correct to describe it as a national sentiment. It is a matter of personal liking or jdislike. Many prefer cremation, and the feeling in favour of this healthy and rational funeral method is growing. It is becoming

firmly established in Wellington. The new system is very necessary in all large centres of population. In our Karori Cemetery alone there axe somewhere about a thousand interments ever-y year. Does not this fact point to the necessity for some more rational means of disposal of the dead than by burial in tihe earth ? The objection to cremation is based, not hipon religious grounds, but upon the very natural desire of most people to have a spot which they can hold as sacred to their dead loved ones, a shrine which they can visit and tend. It is a beautiful sentiment, but equally beautiful was the old classic Roman custom of preserving the ashes of the dead. The prejudice against the reducing of dead bodies to ashes rests solely upon sentiment, and this sentiment, though strong, will gradually lose its present force and weight. But to talk of the practice being wrong because it is irreligious borders upon the absurd.