Burial Scandals

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 21, 1878

The Christian at Work, under the head, Burial Scandals, gives the following account of an occurrence at Akenham, England :—

A child of Baptist parents having died at the age of two years, the vicar was requested to read the burial service, but declined, and peremptorily refused to allow the child to be buried in the churchyard, it not having been baptized.

A Baptist minister was secured, the child’s grave was dug in an adjoining meadow, and the coffin was carried to the front of the church by hand, the use even of a bier being refused. Standing in the path where the coffin was laid, the Baptist clergyman commenced to read selections from the Bible when the vicar appeared upon the scene and interrupted the service. "What has humanity to do with it?" he asked, when rebuked by the friends of the sorrowing parents for his cruel words, and wound up by informing the assemblage—"this child has not been baptized, and is therefore not a Christian! I object to its being buried as such" (even in the meadow).