Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts 1874
The book Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts 1874 was written by author Massachusetts. State Board of Health Here you can read free online of Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts 1874 book, rate and share your impressions in comments. If you don't know what to write, just answer the question: Why is Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts 1874 a good or bad book?
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To the latter class belong the beliefs that the body was unclean, after the departure of the soul ; that by the action of fire the soul was released from all its corporeal bonds, and that the soul itself was thus puri- fied from the contamination which it had contracted iu its embodied state. The idea of sacrifice also entered largely into the ceremony of burning. We have already observed that, as Christianity spread, cremation fell into disuse. The early Christians always buried their dead — a...t least, th^e is no positive evidence to the con- trary ; and those of Rome constructed for this purpose the catacombs, outside the city. They wished to give the remains of their friends the same treatment that was accorded to Christ and the apostles, and therefore adopted the Jewish custom of burial. That their refusal to burn was not con- nected with ideas of the resurrection is shown by Miuucius Felix, who introduces a heathen as saying, "For this reason they execrate the funeral pile and condemn sepulture by burn- ing, as if it precluded the possibility of resurrection." To this Minucius replies, "We do not, as you believe, fear any injury from this kind of sepulture, but we adhere to iuhumation as the more ancient and the preferable mode."* It is also stated of the primitive Christians that they objected to cremation that the practice involved the idea of inhumanity to the living.
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