THE BURIALS BILL.
LORD SELBORNE'S Burials Bill is, on the whole, cour- ageous and satisfactory. We agree with those .who, criticising it less from the point of view of the Dissenters
who demand it, than of the handful of Agnostics or other heretics who have never cared a jot about it, regret that Lord Selborne should at present propose, as Lord Har- rowby proposed, to limit the religious services held at the grave, in case a religious service is held at all by the
friends of the deceased, to "Christian and orderly" services.
So far as we can see, there is no reason in the world for the service being positively Christian in tone, so long as there is no attack on Christianity,—nothing of a nature to insult the great majority of those who share the burial- ground with the friends of the deceased. What all will admit is, that a burial is not a proper occasion for flinging sneers at other people. But so long as the friends of the deceased limit themselves to saying anything that appears to them to contain consolation for the survivors, even though it be no better than a Positivist's ecstasy over the " posthumous " life of the good deeds of the deceased, there can and ought to be no objection to it, and no attempt to exclude it solely because it is not distinctively Christian. What we have a right to do is, to insist that a funeral in a church- yard devoted to the burial of people of many sects and many ways of viewing life and death shall not be made the pretext for a controversy, or an occasion for attacks • on others. Short of this, there should be no limit. If an Agnostic is disposed to comfort the mourners by dwelling on the gradual evolution of higher forms of life out of the life which has just been quenched, the Christian has no ground for vexation or resentment. But while we heartily agree that Lord Harrowby's limitation of the service to one of " Chris- tian " sentiment had much better not have been revived by Lord Selborne, we have no other fault to find with the Bill, and do not believe that even this fault, should it survive the discussion in both Houses, will seriously limit either the popu- larity or the good results of the Bill. It is by the grievances of Dissenters of very decidedly Christian views that the demand for this Bill has been created. If these grievances are removed, there will be hardly any of the least importance left. lathe case of the more famous deists or sceptics, it is usually very easy to secure a funeral in the unconsecrated portion of a cemetery, where 'there need be no scruple about saying whatever the friends of the deceased desire. And as for sceptics or deists who are not famous, the suffering due to bereavement is usually rather enhanced than diminished by their special creed, and their friends, therefore, are in no mood for panegyric on their doubts or triumph in their denials. Ninety per cent. of the real grievances of the Dissenters are grievances of Christian .Dissenters, who wish to hear by the grave the voice of those to whom the dead had listened most gladly during life. And • these grievances will be amply removed by Lord Selbome's Bill, • even without amendment. That, however, is no reason for • not amending it.
We heartily rejoice that Lord Selborne has incorporated in his Bill,—of the historical case for which, by the way, his speech was a very powerful and convincing exposition,—a pro- vision for relieving the Clergy of their moral responsibility to read the whole Burial Service, in cases where parts of that Burial Service seem to them to savour rather of unwarrantable and almost hypocritical assumptions. The Bill gives the clergy- man the right to use at his discretion forms other than the ordinary Burial Service, in cases where the Church does not for- bid the use of the ordinary Burial Service. Such a permission would have been very objectionable while the friends of the deceased had no choice but to go to the incumbent of the churchyard, and ask him to celebrate the Burial Service ; for his substitution of another form of service might then have been regarded as in some way implying his inability to use the ordinary words of hope in connection with the deceased. But now that the friends of the deceased may go to any minister of religion they please, and ask him to conduct
the service in any manner consistent with his office and belief, it is only reasonable that the incumbent, if he is fixed upon to celebrate the service, should be at liberty to vary it, so as to relieve his own conscience, in any way which the Church permits. If the friends of the deceased are dissatisfied at his wish to substitute a new form for the pre- sent Burial Service, they may go to some other clergyman or minister who has no such scruples, and have the service per- formed by him. But this liberty being given, it is clearly only fair that if, after all, the official representative of the particular Church is compelled to officiate, he should be re- lieved from the duty of pronouncing words which seem to him inconsistent with the circumstances of the case. There are similar relaxations of the Rubric for clergymen compelled to officiate in the case of suicides. The Bill thus makes a great step in the direction of liberty on two distinct sides. By enabling the friends of the deceased to dispense with the services of the official clergyman, if they choose, it renders it possible, without any injustice, to enable the official clergyman to dispense with forms which he thinks inappropriate, if they do not so choose. Thus it sets him free from duty alto- gether in the case of ordinary Dissenters, and very many Church people ; and sets him free from any duty he regards as oppressive to his own conscience in the case of those Dissenters or Church people who think fit to require him to perform the duty nevertheless. This double increase of liberty may, we hope, render the Bill acceptable to many who would otherwise have rejected it. But whether it does so or not, nothing less than the Bill as it is, will be accepted by the country ; and something more than the Bill as it is may, we hope, be the result of the Parliamentary discussions which await it. When liberty is given, it had better be given thoroughly. We do not suppose that the Secularists form a thousandth part of the number of persons who desire freedom to bury the dead in their own fashion. But while we are giving that liberty to every one else, we ought to give it to them. Nor is there any reason in the world why, if they will refrain from sneers at more positive forms of faith, they should not have full power to rehearse their own dreary consolations in their own way.
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