There is a kind of
indescribable sympathy, which, like the sentiment of the prophet of
Judah, prompts us to wish that our bones may lie by the side of our
brethren in the sepulchre. This feeling is part of our nature, and
belongs to that universal link which connects and binds man to man, and
continues the chain till lost in the essence of divinity....
"What, indeed! can mark a greater alienation of the soul from its
original nature, than the infidelity which chooses for the bed of the
grave spots unhallowed by religious associations. They who deny their
God, and cavil at his Word, can have no reverence for places which, like
his houses of prayer and the consecrated receptacles of the dead, derive
all their sanctity and influence from a belief in his mercies, and a
sense of our demerits--hence, having banished themselves from their
Father's house, they are content to 'lie down in the grave like the
beasts that perish.' Whilst, on the contrary, the simply virtuous, the
sincerely religious, the soberly pious, without attaching any value as
to the future destination of the soul, to the spot in which its earthly
sister may crumble to its kindred dust, cherish the pleasing hope that
their mortal bodies may repose in those places alone which religion
hallows. They long not for pleasure grottos or druidical coppices, in
which to be gathered to their fathers, but dwelling with chastened hope
on the glories of the resurrection, they desire their mortal particles
may be found when the Lord cometh to complete his victory over the
grave, in the spot, and contiguous to the house 'in which he has chosen
to place his name there.
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