The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and HareLeighton, Alexander
History
The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and Hare
Leighton, Alexander
Body snatching; Burke, William, 1792-1829; Hare, William, 1792?-1870?
served by such men and such acts, in opposition to the first and last
throbbings of the love of kindred, is that any reason why nature should
renounce her right of forming man in the image of God, and with affections
which are to endure through all eternity? But we have even now, when it is
whispered that subjects are again becoming scarce, men of the Christian
faith who speak lightly of the dead human frame as nothing when deprived
of the spirit. This may do for the logic of physics, but we have been led
to believe that the religion we profess is not that of Merry-Andrew or
the "Spune," but a divine intimation that the temple of the soul is not
limited to the time of the earth--yea, that it is something which, _only
changed_, shall rise again and endure for ever. Even this is not adverse
to the claims of science; but as a shade distinguishes homicide and
murder, so does a shade distinguish between science in reverence to God,
and science in desecration of His first and most universal laws.
Sympathising Sextons, Doctors, and Relatives.
All forces are measured by opposition, as, indeed, all the phenomena of
nature are known to us by comparison, and so, in all fairness, we must
estimate the turpitude of the professors and students the more lightly, in
proportion to their freedom from all endearing feelings of recognition or
friendship towards those whose remains came within their studies. The same
metre is due to the class of purveyors, and Heaven knows how much, after
all this abatement, remained at their debit, cognisant as they behoved to
be of the certainty that they were sowing the bitter seeds of misery
throughout the land. But what are we to say of others--doctors in the
country who were privy to the remunerated exhumation of their
patients--sextons who gave the pregnant hint, and then went to sleep in
the expectation of a fee in the morning--nay, of those, and such at that
time were counted among human beings, who bartered their friends and
relatives for a smile of mammon?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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