RURAL BURIAL. "Sustained and soothed By an unflattering trust, approach thy grave, ALL mankind have associated a peculiar sacredness with the pleasant scenes and objects of the natural world, and have indulged a hope that when they died, their remains might be deposited in a grave, under the protection of trees and in the bosom of nature. They love to reflect that in death they may be surrounded by those objects which were agreeable to them in their life-time, that the flowers might bloom upon the green turf under which they lie, and the birds and insects make melody over their graves. Though reason causes us to believe that when we are gone to our last repose, we have no consciousness of our situation there is something within the mind which intimates that the spirit may be hovering near, and may even in its heavenly state feel the benign influence of nature that breathes around the place where its mortal dust is deposited. We indulge this sentiment more deeply as it relates to the burial of our friends, than in anticipation of our own death and burial. We feel a serene satisfaction in knowing that a beloved friend, whose ear can no longer hear the words of life, is buried under a green tree, beneath whose shade we may resort, when we would offer to the dead the tribute of our sorrow to our veneration. The trees, the flowers, the still waters, and the green landscape, allied as they are with the themes of poetry, with our ideas of heaven, and with the hopes of our immor tality, soften our grief into a tender melancholy, and quiet the anxieties of faith. The clouds that gather about the western sun shed the glow of heaven upon the gloom of the grave, and affect the mind with a deeper realization of the promises of religious hope. Every flower that springs up from the green turf, in its embossment of evergreen mosses, seems like a special messenger of consolation; and we cannot avoid the reflection that the remains of our friends repose more quietly in these rural shades, and that their spirits are blest by the same objects that tranquillize our sorrows. As we stroll through the grounds, we read lessons which heaven, through nature, conveys to us in many a pleasing emblem of light and beauty. The winds represent the vicissitudes of life: but they inculcate the lesson that there is no adversity that is not followed by the tranquillity of a better day. The flowers bud and bloom, and, in their vernal loveliness, represent the morning of our days and the spring-time of our life; but they perish, like our own corporeal frames, to indicate by their revival that new life, of which death is but the celestial dawning. The trees that spread their branches and extend their benevolent shade over the graves of our friends, are a manifestation of that unseen power that has assembled the departed spirits under his providential care. There is not a more pleasing doctrine of religion than that faith which views all material objects as the representations of something more beautiful and divine existing in the spiritual world. To know all that is hereafter to be known would unfit the mind for the enjoyment of the pleasures we derive from studying the evidences of things unseen. A perfect certainty of future bliss must benumb that zeal which arises from a consciousness of the necessity of exertion, in order to obtain the objects of our wishes. Even the enjoyment of the present is greater, because we know that our possessions may slip away from us; and we are prompted by this insecurity to continual action and watchfulness. From this activity and suspense, this hope and uncertainty proceed all the zest of life. We are not permitted to know the truth of all we believe. Imagination presents us glimpses of divine truths, which reason will not allow us to believe with the full assurance of a positive faith. Imagination affords us these gleams of light to cheer and encourage the ardor of hope; but reason suggests doubts, lest in the full certainty of celestial happiness, we should renounce the grosser cares of this world, and surrender ourselves entirely to the future. The benevolence of the Deity does not wholly conceal, nor does it fully unfold the most delightful realities of the heavenly world. Hence the different forms and aspects of nature are allowed by the Deity, to be the material representations of the blessings of another existence. Every object that is charming to our senses derives half its charm from its moral, religious, and emblematical signification. From these suggestions of divine things proceed all the poetry, the beauty, and the romance of the material world; and the reason why many persons have no passionate love of nature is, that they have never learned to interpret these emblems that appear on the face of the earth and the heavens. The pleasures we derive from the verdure of the fields, the pyramidal forms of the trees, the blooming, the fading, and the resurrection of flowers, are the pleasures of a religious and a poetical mind; and there is not a beautiful object in nature that does not borrow its light and its loveliness from heaven. How would the gorgeous and varied tints and forms of the clouds fade upon the imagination, if it perceived in them no similitude to the conceptions we have formed of celestial glory and beauty, or if these objects never suggested a thought beyond this mundane world. The mind is enabled to extend its thoughts further into infinity by the sight of these radiant hues of sunset, and to feel a rapture which is capable of being inspired by no other natural scenes. All this proceeds from our habit of associating them with our ideas of the soul's immortality, with the infinite attributes of the Divine Being, and with our hopes of another and a brighter life. If an unbeliever derives a similar pleasure from the same objects, he too is religious in the midst of his unbelief. Though his reason does not acknowledge a system of theology, he cherishes these fond ideas in his mind as pleasing illusions to which he yields a sort of poetic faith. The very uncertainty of religious truths renders them more dear to our souls, as we cling with greater affection to a friend who is absent, and whose fate is involved in mystery. The doubtfulness of these points is necessary for our contentment with the unsatisfying realities of life -a contentment which is needful to the enjoyment of our existence. Through nature, in her myriad forms of beauty and sublimity, has the Deity benevolently given us intimations of these truths; and the more we study their forms and aspects, the more vivid will be these intimations, and the more devoted our faith in the dim but pleasing assurances which they bring to our minds of the reality of what cannot be known, until mortals have become immortal. It is while animated by these feelings that we delight to surround the tombs of our departed friends, with all the beautiful objects of nature; in the fields where the sods that cover their graves are full of significant forms the symbols of life, death and immortality: beneath the blue sky, which is the emblem as well as the real image of infinity; and beneath the clouds, which, under their ethereal banners, seem to open the gates of heaven to those who are leaving this world. One day in the summer of 1850, as I was taking a solitary stroll in one of our rural villages, I saw a young woman, neatly but plainly attired, sitting upon a knoll, under a large tupelo tree, that spread its branches over the widening of a small stream in the valley. She had evidently been weeping, and had dried her tears on seeing me approach. I made an apology for interrupting her, and then remarked that the little valley in which we had met was remarkably beautiful and almost enchanting. "Yes," she replied, "and it is particularly so to me, for here my sister, who died three years ago, used to come. with me often, on pleasant afternoons; and here we sat, sometimes with a book and sometimes with our needlework; and here we gathered a great number and variety of wild flowers, which she pressed with her own hand between papers, and gave them a name. Some of the names were of her own invention; but I always call the flower by the name she gave it." I inquired if her sister was buried here. "She is not," she replied, “but here I know, if her spirit dwells near, she would delight to have been buried; and I have transplanted many of these flowers upon her grave and around it, taking them up on a trowel with the sods, while they are in bloom, and they have seldom failed to come into blossom there the following seasons. I have often wished she was buried here, but in that case, I should not enjoy the pleasure of transplanting these flowers on her grave, which is in a burial place not far distant." Do you think your sister is conscious of these offerings to her memory." "I think so; and this belief is the source of all my 66 |