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in those who see them. This they conceive to be best done by depriving the dead body of all ornaments and outward honours. For, stripped in this manner, they conceive it to approach the nearest to its native worthlessness or dust. Such funerals, therefore, may excite in the spectator a deep sense of the low and debased condition of man. And his feelings will be pure on the occasion, because they will be unmixed with the consideration of the artificial distinctions of human life. The spectator too will be more likely, if he sees all go undistinguished to the grave, to deduce for himself the moral lesson, that there is no true elevation of one above another, only as men follow the practical duties of virtue and religion. But what serious reflections, or what lessons of morality, on the other hand, do the funerals of the world produce, if accompanied with pomp and splendour? To those who have sober and serious minds, they produce a kind of pity that is mingled with disgust. In those of a ludicrous turn they provoke ludicrous ideas, when they see a dead body attended with such extravagant parade. To the vulgar and the ignorant no one use

ful

ful lesson is given. Their senses are all absorbed in the show; and the thoughts of the worthlessness of man, as well as of death and the grave, which ought naturally to suggest themselves on such occasions, are swallowed up in the grandeur and pageantry of the procession. Funerals therefore of this kind are calculated to throw honour upon riches, abstractedly of moral merit; to make the creature of as much importance when dead as when alive; to lessen the humility of man; and to destroy of course the moral and religious feelings that should arise upon such occasions. Add to which, that such a conduct among Christians must be peculiarly improper. For the Christian dispensation teaches man, that he is to work out his salvation with "fear and trembling." It seems inconsistent, therefore, to accompany with all the outward signs of honour and greatness the body of a poor wretch, who has had this difficult and awful task to perform, and who is on his last earthly journey, previously to his appearance before the tribunal of the Almighty, to be judged for the deeds which he has committed in the flesh.

Actuated by such sentiments as these, the
Quakers

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. In 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.

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place.

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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,

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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 respective 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 grave 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.

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