Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/76

66. There was some fear that, by calling his name, he might come back.

It would be wrong to accuse the Indians of want of feeling indicated by their horror of the dead. In one of the most ancient accounts—that of Cabeza de Vaca—it is declared that the parents and other relatives of the sick show much sympathy while life remains, but give none to the dead—do not speak of them or weep among themselves, or make any signs of grief or approach the body. This domestic reticence is entirely different from, but not antagonistic to, the obligatory mortuary rites which were practiced.

To secure the living from the presence of the spirits of the dead was the first object, and the second was to assist those spirits in the journey to their destination. These were the prevailing ideas of all the mortuary customs of the Indians. It may be true that there was in some cases (though missionary influence is to be suspected) a belief that there were two different regions in which the bad and the good would severally remain, but that was not of general acceptance. There was but one future country, and the only question was whether the spirits got there or not. There was no hell.

The Israelites, in their sacred books, do not show the influence of fears or hopes concerning a future state with reference to individual morality. Among them death at any age was not an inevitable necessity, as they thought that life might be prolonged to an indefinite extent, but it was inflicted as a punishment and their signs of mourning were acts of penitence and contrition, with the idea that the survivors might have been the cause of the death. All deaths were classed with public calamities, such as pestilence, famine, drought, or invasion, being the work of an enemy—perhaps a punishing god, perhaps a daimon or a witch. They regarded it so great an evil to die unlamented that it was one of the four great judgments against which they prayed, and it was called the burial of an ass. These are the inferences to be derived from the books as we have them. It is, however, questionable whether rites attending upon death were not with them similar in intent to those of the Indians—i.e., to provide, by means of those rites, for the future welfare of the departed, rather than in accordance with our modern sentiment, to show respect and personal sorrow. Passages of the Old Testament may be noted—e.g., the one telling how the bodies of Saul and his children were rescued from Bethshan and taken to Jabesh, where they were burned and the bones buried. The ceremony in this case and others seems to have been the burning of the flesh and the burial of the bones, as was frequently done by the Indians on occasions of haste, without waiting as usual for the decay of the flesh, the later gathering of the bones being at stated periods of years.

There is no evidence that the Israelites feared the corpse and