Abstract
It has been estimated that prehistoric people had an expectation of life of about 18 years. Life was short. In ancient Rome, the life-span was only slightly greater. In the middle ages in England, it was about 33. By 1841, the expectation of life in Britain for a man was 40, for a woman 42. Now, for Westerners, it is somewhat more than the biblical target of threescore years and ten.1
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Notes
J. Hick, Death and Eternal Life (London: Fount, 1979) p. 81.
The figures are given in J. Hick, ibid., Ch. 4; D. S. Cairns, The Army and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1919) p. 16; R. Gill, The Myth of the Empty Church (London: SPCK, 1993) pp. 201–6.
See S. Anthony, Discovery of Death in Childhood and After (London: Allen Lane, 1971) pp. 121–2.
Quoted in R. E. Neale, The Art of Dying (New York: Harper and Row, 1973) p. 95.
O. Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) p. 105.
K. Ward, A Vision to Pursue (London: SCM, 1991) p. 120.
Quoted in O. Lancaster, With an Eye to the Future (London: Murray, 1967) p. 62.
R. Hartill, Writers Revealed (London: BBC, 1989) p. 58.
H. S. Holland, Facts of the Faith (London: Longmans, 1919) p. 126.
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© 1995 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Lewis, C. (1995). Beyond the Crematorium — Popular Belief. In: Cohn-Sherbok, D., Lewis, C. (eds) Beyond Death. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375970_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375970_17
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