Paris, 1786, was a year of heavy rains and flooding. The graveyard Les Innocents was overflowing with corpses; accordingly, an edict went out that the cemetery could take no more bodies. The corpses must be moved to tunneled catacombs. As the bodies were exhumed, they were found to be on their stomachs. So many crumpled skeletons were found that the public became fearful that they were in great danger of being buried alive. (1)
With the images of fingernail marks on coffins, bodies on their sides, and torn shrouds, this fear swept, and the safety coffin became a thing of fashion. Ingenious coffins were constructed to aid those that had been buried alive. Some of which included bells that were tied to the hands and feet to alert rescuers, while others had tubes installed for food and oxygen.
Famously, Timothy Smith, after dying on Halloween was lowered in his safety coffin. (2) He had installed a window above his face: to this day, people still go to look down into his grave. It was with the invention of safety coffins that the tradition of graveyard watchers comes from. The watchmen were charged with listening for the ringing of bells and digging up those who had been buried alive.
The backwardness of science and medicine at this time led the public to advocate for grave watchers. Today, backward thinking has caused a different group of people to be in danger of being buried alive. In American Society, today, the unborn have been consigned to living graves; pro-abortion lies have buried the unborn.
Medical science used to say that, quickening, or when a woman felt her child move in the womb for the first time was when life begins; at one time, it was believed that when individual can feel pain is when life begins; others have said that a child’s ability to live apart from their mother establishes its value.
However, as science has progressed it has become undisputed medical opinion that human life begins at conception. “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is experimental evidence.” French geneticist Jerome L. LeJeune, while testifying before a Senate Subcommittee. Francis Beckwith notes in Defending Life
Today, American society needs another kind of bell ringer. Society needs a bell ringer that will sit in the graveyards of the abortion movement and dig for truth until the bodies of the unborn are exhumed. It needs watchmen that will listen for the toll of bells of truth and not leave for dead those buried by the lies of the abortion agenda. It needs its watchmen to stay awake through the long night and wait to exhume the living.
The Les Innocents cemetery of Paris where so many were buried alive was named for the innocents that were murdered by Herod in the Bible. Today, the innocents of American Society are experiencing their own living death. Deafness toward the rights of these citizens mutes other cries: eugenics, euthanasia, etc. exemplify the growing neglect of other tolling bells. As watchmen lie drunk in the graveyards of abortion rhetoric, they have chosen to lie in danger of being buried themselves. Who will hear them ring?
Today, listen for the tolling of the bells. Dig for truth. Exhume the living.
1. http://listverse.com/2010/02/02/10-horrifying-premature-burials/
2. thechirurgeonsapprentice.com/2013/06/26/buried-alive-19th-century-safety-coffins/