“I have seen death in every aspect,” said a general to Dr. Josat, a gentleman rewarded for a book on mortuary houses, “and it has never had any terrors for me; but I own that I shudder at the notion of finding it at the bottom of a ditch in the cemetery.” Incomplete death, or trance, as it is called, stands midway between death and life. During this state the senses cannot receive impressions; they are inactive, paralyzed, as it were. Yet the spark of life is still there and can, under proper care, be retained until the natural condition is restored. Yet almost always trance ends through ignorance and carelessness in complete death. It is an established fact that there is no certain sign of death, none but the beginning of decomposition. To prevent premature burial the body must be retained until the commencement of decay is visible. Incineration protects from the horrors of burial alive. Even if a person in a trance should be introduced into a cremation furnace, the intense heat to which the body would be subjected would extinguish life immediately and painlessly. It is alleged by some who are more impressed by prejudice than reason, that cremation is heathenish, brutish, pagan, atheistic,—in short, contrary to Christian practice. This I deny! To be sure the heathen did practice it,—the ancient Asiatics (Oriental peoples in general), Romans, Greeks, Teutons, and Etruscans,—but at the same time they executed grave-burial; and yet I have never heard anybody decry the latter as abominable, disgusting, and heathenish. It must be kept in mind, that the first Christians were compelled by their heathen persecutors to adopt burial. They were forced to inter their dead secretly in the catacombs; they could not, even if they had chosen to, burn their dead, as the smoke from the cremation pyre would have betrayed them. Why inhumation should have become so universal among the Christians, that it is looked upon as a necessary part of the religion, and all other means of disposal of the dead as heathenish, is not entirely plain. There is no condemnation of cremation in any of the dogmatic teachings of the apostles. The early Christians, whether in Judæa, Greece, or Rome, were mainly of the poorer classes, who had to bury their dead. The mere fact that the richer and more educated classes, who were the most difficult to proselytize, universally practiced cremation would probably cause that custom to be associated with their other heathenish practices.