Professor Carpenter's Lecture.

Professor Carpenter gave the second lecture in his course in Divinity Chapel last night, on the subject of the "Cultus of the Dead."

The cultus of the dead comprises the observances and offerings paid to the dead as sentient beings. So widespread has been this cultus from the earliest ages that Spencer tries to derive all religion from it. Savage minds connect events in causal sequence very readily and they invoke the dead according as they see good or evil following their acts. The sentiments which lead to this invocation of the dead vary among different people. Sometimes the terror of the dead predominates, and we find various charms and obstacles employed to prevent the return of the dead to the places which they frequented in life. The dead body was often carried away by a crooked or circuitous path so that the spirit might not find the way back. Fire, water and thorns were interposed between the corpse and the outside world. Careful attention was paid to the wants of the dead, not from affection, but to satisfy them with their present lot and to prevent their return.

Among other people affection for the deceased was the motive in the cultus of the dead. Food was often forced into the mouths of the corpses and left with the bodies in the tombs. From providing food for the dead it was a simple transition to supply them with other comforts. Scores of human beings were sacrificed in order to add splendor to the entry of the dead into the new existence.

Traces of the cultus are distinctly seen in the Semitic races and many evidences of it exist in the Bible. In the Aryan races, too, the cultus existed along with the most exalted developments of philosophical thought.

Professor Carpenter went minutely into the usages of Greece and India with regard to the cultus, and closed with a feeling allusion to the moral effect of that reverence for the past of which the cultus of the dead is an expression.