The Christian Cemetery in the Nineteenth Century - Brother Hermenegild Tosf - Bog

" I can forgive a great deal: but I detest the Atheist and the Infidel. How can you expect me to tolerate that creature who, by denying the existence of the soul, proclaims to the world that he is a soulless clod of earth, and seeks to make me, like himself, but living dirt!" NAPOLEON 1 WE have read these letters of Monseigneur Gaume with much pleasure, and congratulate the Rev. Father Brennan on the good and even elegant translation which he has made, and now presents to the public. No words of ours are likely to add any thing to the interest with which his work will be read, or to the profit which may be gained from it. It seems to us that the publication of the letters in our language will be attended with two very important results. It will awaken the reader to the alarming facts of which many of us are ignorant, and which threaten great evils to society. Infidelity has become very bold when it dares to rifle the grave, and exult in driving the consolations of religion from the dying-hour. The attempt to deny God and His providence goes to the extent of thorough atheism, and makes man only a clod of the earth, with no higher hopes than those of the beasts that perish. In our own country, no legislature has as yet sought to prevent the recognition of God at the tomb, or disturb the rites of Christian burial. Yet men who call themselves intelligent, are discussing the immortality of the soul, as if it were an open question, or yet to be proved. And we have seen articles in leading journals in favor of burning the bodies of the dead, and thus putting an end to what they call the physical evils of cemeteries. The second result which should flow from the knowledge of facts so startling, is a truer fidelity to that religion which alone can protect all that is most dear to man. Since the Protestant reformation, we have seen every article of faith denied until there is nothing left of Christianity. Its protection over our lives and its care for the dead, which came from the incarnation and death of the Son of God, are both taken away by that license of private judgment whose true name is unbelief, or the rejection of the supernatural. No creed can stand, no revelation be preached, no light shine beyond the grave, but from "the pillar and ground of the truth," which rests on Jesus Christ, and the verity of His divinity. Those who will not accept atheism, with its sad havoc of all that is noble or moral, must return to the safe shelter of that Church which can never change, but in her dispensation is like her divine Founder, " the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever."