But while they considered personal identity and consciousness unchanged and the friend as belonging to them, as much after death as before, they regarded his death as an advancement, an honor, a glory. It was customary, we are told, to celebrate the day of his death as his birth-day--the day when he was born to new immortal life. Tertullian, who died in the year 220 in his treatise called the _Soldier's Chaplet_, says: "We make anniversary oblations for the dead--for their birth-days," meaning the day of their death. In another place he says, "It was the practice of a widow to pray for the soul of her deceased husband, desiring on his behalf present refreshment or rest, and a part in the first resurrection," and offering annually for him oblation on the day of his _falling asleep_. By this gentle term the rest of the body in the grave was always spoken of among Christians. It is stated that on these anniversary days of commemorating the dead they were used to make a feast, inviting both clergy and people, but especially the poor and needy, the widows and orphans, that it might not only be a memorial of rest to the dead, but a memorial of a sweet savor in the sight of God. A Christian funeral was in every respect a standing contrast to the lugubrious and depressing gloom of modern times. Palms and olive branches were carried in the funeral procession, and the cypress was rejected as symbolizing gloom. Psalms and hymns of a joyful and triumphant tone were sung around the corpse while it was kept in the house and on the way to the grave. St. Chrysostom, speaking of funeral services, quotes passages from the psalms and hymns that were in common use, thus: "What mean our psalms and hymns? Do we not glorify God and give him thanks that he hath crowned him that has departed, that he hath delivered him from trouble, that he hath set him free from all fear? Consider what thou singest at the time. 'Turn again to thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath rewarded thee;' and again: 'I will fear no evil because thou art with me;' and again: 'Thou art my refuge from the affliction that compasseth me about.' Consider what these psalms mean. If thou believest the things which thou sayest to be true, why dost thou weep and lament and make a pageantry and a mock of thy singing? If thou believest them _not_ to be true, why dost thou play the hypocrite so much as to sing?" Coleman says, also: "The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered at funerals and often at the grave itself. By this rite it was professed that the communion of saints was still perpetuated between the living and the dead. It was a favorite idea that both still continued members of the same mystical body, the same on earth and in heaven."--_Antiq., p. 413._