Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1884 — Mourning for the Dead. [ARTICLE]

Mourning for the Dead.

There are few things in which men anfl women show themselves so irrational as in prolonged and consuming grief for the dead. It is not in human nature to be philosophic when the earth has closed over one we love, but to nourish agony of remembrance and sorrow is ’ nearly an abdication of reason itself. The God who orders our births orders likewise our deaths. All must die. To die is as common and as natural as to live. Being common, universal, certain, it cannot be an evil. Those who have gone before, however long their days, seem to have lived and Vanished as creatures of an hour, so that even over the death of the young we should not lament at the seeming untimelessness of their taking off. It is indiscreet, to assume that the death of the young is a peculiar calamity and hardship. How can we tell what they have escaped, or decide that they are not singularly fortunate? Who finds life such an unmixed blessing as to grieve long over the translation of those who are yet innocent and happy to serener spheres? It is vain and unavailing to grieve at what has happened and cannot be altered. It does no good to the dead and it injures the living. It is also mutiny against the Presiding Judge of us all. To honor the dead aright is to cherish fondly the memory of good dispositions and deeds, and make that memory a guide for our own spiritual attainments. This is better than marble slabs, glowing memorials, or devouring pangs of fruitless woe. The ancient world never clothed death with the terrors which came in with the church of the middle ages. Who grieves forever has no faith in a reunion. Such tears silently proclaim the fear of annihilation, the despair that forgets God.— Pittsburgh Telegraph- Chronicle.