Against Funeral Display

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 20, 1880

Against Funeral Display

ALL the religious denominations of Worcester, Mass., have, through their clergy, united in deprecation of funeral display. A right move and in the right direction. At the funeral of the late John C. Green, the funeral services comprised only prayer and reading of suitable passages of Scripture; and at the obsequies of the late James Lenox, who, too, has given away his millions, the services at the house were equally simple. There were no flowers, no address, no pall-bearers, and no one was admitted unless presenting a card of admission from the family. Between such rites and the vulgar mortuary exhibitions which convert the occasion into a florist's and other display a wide chasm intervenes.—Christian at Work.