Note 123 — THE WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. (continued 3)

[23] The Alta Vendita and the intellectual party in Masonry have for a long time endeavoured to revive practices which Christianity did away with, and which were distinctly Pagan. Amongst others they have made every exertion to destroy the Christian respect for the dead, and every respect for the dead which kept alive in the living the belief in the immortality of the soul. Death is with man, a powerful means to keep alive in him a wholesome fear of his Creator, and respect for religion. Spiritual writers, following the advice of the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures, “Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin,” always place before Christians the thought of death as the most wholesome lesson in the spiritual life. The demon from the beginning tried to do away with this salutary thought as the most opposed to his designs. When Eve feared to eat the forbidden fruit it was because of the terror with which death inspired her. The devil lied in telling her “No, ye shall not die the death.” She believed the liar and the murderer. His followers in the secret societies established by him, and which he keeps in such unity of aim and action, second his desire to the utmost by doing away with whatever may keep alive in man the thoughts of his last end and of a future resurrection, and, of course, of judgment. Weishaupt taught his disciples to look upon suicide as a praiseworthy means of flying the horrors of death and present inconvenience. Cremation, instantly destroying the terrors of corruption—the death’s head and cross bones—the worst features in mortality, as exhibited in a corpse, is therefore largely advocated by the secret societies on plausibly devised sanitary, æsthetic, and economical grounds. But it is a pagan practice, opposed to that followed ever since the creation of the world by all that had the knowledge of the true God in the Primeval, Jewish, and Christian dispensations. The Revolution in Italy has established at Rome, Milan, and Naples means of cremating bodies, and advanced Freemasons, like Garibaldi, have in their wills, directed that their bodies should be cremated. A little reflection, however, will show that neither for rich nor poor, for sanitary, for economical or any other reasons can cremation be advocated in preference to burial. For besides the fact that the earth which is always the best, safest, and readiest solvent for corruption, may be had everywhere in abundance, and at a safe enough distance from cities if so desired, there is the fact before us that the Roman poor and slaves, were thrown into pits to save expense; while cremation, where practised by the rich, led to most extravagant expenses and excesses. Christians, when they find plausibly given, interesting notices of cremation in journals of any kind, may be quite sure that the writer who writes them is influenced by the secret sect, and these scribes are found everywhere and find means to ventilate their ideas—unsuspected by the proprietors—sometimes into journals professedly Catholic. They are advocating, it is thought, a harmless sanitary arrangement not condemned by the Church; but they are doing all the while, consciously or unconsciously, the work of the secret Atheistic sect. As it is with cremation, so it is with the eating of horse-flesh and other apparently harmless practices advocated by the sectaries solely because in practice or in theory, discountenanced by, or not practised by, Christians. When in these days, a distinctive anti-Christian custom is seen advocated without any urgent reason, in the press, now almost entirely in the hands of members of the sect, and generally Jewish members, Christians may fear that the cloven foot is in the matter. The cold water, the ridicule, the contempt thrown upon religious observances, the attempt to rob them of their purely Christian character, are other methods employed by the sects to loosen the influence of Christianity. In opposition to these, Christian people should carefully study to keep the joy of Christmas, the penitential fasts, the sanctity of Holy Week, the splendour of Easter, the feasts of God’s holy Mother and of the saints—to fill themselves, in one word, with the Christian spirit of the Ages of Faith.