GOD'S ACRE.

CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT BURIAL.

Man's home is in the grave!

Here dwell the multitude.

From tomb to tomb one lesson still replies.

HERE is nothing so momentous as death, as

THERE

there is nothing so imminent, nothing so certain, nothing so universal. 'It is appointed unto all men once to die.' There is no exemption, no reprieve. This happeneth unto all' to the king on the loftiest throne-to the wretch in the most miserable hovel; to Dives in his purple luxury-to Lazarus in his squalid rags; to the murderer in his chainsor the meek Christian in her holy ministerings ;for 'dust to dust' was the sentence pronounced on all humanity.

All nations, and languages, and people the ancient princes of the earth, when that glorious earth was fresh from the hand of her Maker, and the morning stars sang together for joy; those Titans of the new-created world, almost fabulous to

B

us in their superhuman might; the awful patriarchs of the antediluvian age; the hoary elders of the chosen people of God; the mighty nations whose records are lost in the mists of ages rolled away; the polished people who gave laws to the known world; the hordes of barbarians to whom they, in their turn, succumbed; the Numidian and the Scythian; the bond and the free; the swarthy Ethiop and the pale Frank; the red Indian, the tawny Chinese, and the fair-haired harbingers of progress' through newdiscovered worlds;-every soul of every climate, nation, and language under heaven-from him who breathed in Paradise to the babe that did but yesterday suspire'-hath yielded, must yield, to the fiat, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.'

AND DEATH HATH PASSED UPON ALL.

This being so, all circumstances connected with a theme so engrossing and momentous must needs be imbued with an interest passing that which pertains to more transitory concerns. Each human being has a personal stake in that crisis which must, in some short period, come home to himself.

The care and tendance usually bestowed on this mortal part, when laid to rest and to wait 'in hope,' is a subject which more or less occupies the attention of all thoughtful people.

After reading of the barbarous usages of savage nations, or of the elaborate rites of cultivated ones; of the vagaries of fanaticism, or the strange fancies into which poor untaught human nature has been beguiled-we turn with thankful reverence to the serene, simple, and hopeful observances which Christianity teaches, when 'man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.'

Volume upon volume would hardly suffice to exemplify fully such usages; but these few noticesculled in no irreverent spirit, and with no careless hand, from memorials which have met my view— may, I venture to hope, be found acceptable and interesting.

Brief indeed must be our general references;-and here, even on the very threshold of inquiry, we are stopped; for when that reaper whose name is Death' gathered the first-fruits of his human harvest, we have no record, no trace, no intimation of the proceedings of the then wretched first couple in regard to the remains of their murdered son. Probably, he was laid in the earth; for there is a tradition, rife to this day, that his bereaved parent, Adam, was buried on Mount Calvary' (on the very place that the tradition may lose no point-on which the Redeemer's cross was afterwards elevated): and we

are told by a recent traveller, that Golgotha, the place of a skull, was so named because Adam's was found there—he having desired to be buried where he knew, prophetically, the blood of the Saviour should in due time be shed.

Such a tradition as this is indeed more curious than important—more interesting than trustworthy; but it refers to a requisition of humanity which never was, never can be, regarded with indifference.

'Give me possession of a burying-place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight,' said the great patriarch to the sons of Heth: a stern necessity—a peremptory duty throughout the whole earth, from the death of the first man to the babe of to-dayfrom the beginning of time even until its end; one, too, which touches all the higher and nobler sympathies of our nature-one regarded by the wisest with pious reverence, and by the most ignorant with superstitious awe, and which by all is marked with ceremonial observances, as varied almost as the diverse nations who people the globe.

The Egyptians, the wisest nation on earth, as also the fountain of wisdom to others, exhausted all their skill and science in a futile attempt to preserve the perishable body-futile, for though, as recent experiment has proved,