BISHOP ON CREMATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 November 1938, Page 7

BISHOP ON CREMATION

“That we cannot say how our immortal spirit will be clothed upon hereafter does not in any way constitute an argument against the resurrection of the body.” said the Bishop of Norwich at the recent conference of the English Cremation Society. The dissolution of our present frame, whether by cremation or otherwise, seems to move in different plane from our Christian hope that our bodies, changed and transfigured for the new life, but still recognisable will, in a wholly new way, clothe our spirits. ’There is a natural body,’ so we read, ’and there is a spiritual body.' Cremation touches the first but not the second. Cremation no more mars the spiritual body than any othci form of dissolution. The mystery of the relation of the body which dies to the body which rises is beyond the apprehension of our present powers. We can see the impossibility of supposing that a caterpillar can in any sense anticipate the beautiful form and activity of the butterfly. Here of course there is a clear physical continuity, but the onestage of life leads to another which is wholly diverse. So may -we suppose it will be with ourselves ”