Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1890 — IHE FIRST NECROPOLIS. [ARTICLE]

IHE FIRST NECROPOLIS.

Sartor Thoughts By Sot. T. DaWitt Xjtlmags. •- TBcrfjrr Hachpolah, The Last Besting Place of Abraham, Isaac, Bebekah, Jacob and - Leah.—A Hallowed Field of Arborescent Beauty— Eolations of Besnrrection Day to the Tomb. ______ Last Sunday morning Dr. Talmage at {be Brooklyn Academy of Mosio delivered i timely sermon on “Easter Thoughts,” taking his text from Gen. 23: 17—18—“ And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field ind the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure Into Abraham.” Here is the first cemetery over laid out Machpelah was its name. It was an arborescent beauty, where the wound of ieath was bandaged with foliage. Abraham, a rich man, not being able to bribe the King of Terrors, proposes here, as far is possible, to cover up his ravages. He had no doubt previously noticed this region, ind now that Sarah his wife had died—that remarkable person who at ninety years or age had born to her the son Isaac, ind who now, after she had reached ono

hundred and twenty-seven years, had expired—Abraham is negotiating for a family plot for her last slumber. Ephron owned this real estate, and after,* in mock lympathy for Abraham, refusing to take anything for it, now sticks jn a big price—four hundred shekels of silver. This cemetery lot is paid for, and the transfer made, in the presence of witnesses in a public place, for there were - ho deeds and no halts of record in those larly times. Then in a cavern of limestone rock Abraham put Sarah, and, a few years after, himself followed, and then Isaac and Rebekah, and then Jacob and Leah. Embowered, picturesque, 1 and memorable M»chpel..hl That “God’s-acre” dedicated by Abraham has been the mother of innumerable mortuary observances. The necropolis of every civilized land has vied With its metropolis; The most beautiful dills of Europn outside the great cities are covered witn obelisk and funeral vase and arched gateways and columns and parterres in honor of the inhumated. The Appian Way of Rome was bordered by sepulchral commemorations. For this purpose Pisa has its arcades -ofmarble, sculptured into exquisite bas-reliefs and the features of dear faces that have vanisned. Genoa has it 3 terraces cut into tombs; and Constantinople covers with cypress thj silent habitations; and Paris has its Pere-la-Chaise, on whose heights rest Balzac and David and Marshal Ney and Cuvi.'r and La Place and Moliere, and a mighty group of warriors and poets and painters and musicians, la all foreign nations utmost genius on ail sides is expend' 1 in the work of interment, mummification ar.d incineration. Gurown country consents<to be second to mono in respect to the lifeless body. Every city and town and neighborhood of any intelligence or virtue has, not many miles away, its sacred enclosure, where affection has engaged sculptor’s chisel and fiorist’b spade and artificer in metals. Our own city has shown its religion as well as its art, in the manner in which it bolds the memory of those who have passed forever away, by its Cypress Hills and its Evergreens and its Calvary and its Holy Cross and Friends’ cemeteries. All the world knows of our Greenwood, with now about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants sleeping among hills that overlook the sea, and by lakes embosomed in an Eden of flowers, our American Y\ estminster Abbey, ad Acropolis of mortuary architecture, a Pantheon of mighty ones asoendeelegies instons, Iliads in marble, whole generation- in peace waiting for othar generations to join them. No domitory of breathless sleepers in all the would has so many mighty dead. Among proacuers of the gospel, Hetbune and Thomas Da Wi'and Bishop .lanes and Tyng, and Abael the missionary, and Beecher and Buddington and McCiintock ar.d Ins.tip and Bangs and Chapin and Noah Schneck and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among musicians, the renowned GaitsChalk, and the holy Thomas Hastings. Among philanthropists, Peter Cooper and Isaac T. Hopper and Lucretia Most [and Isabella Graham, and Henry Bergh, the apostle of mercy to the brute creation. Among the literati, the Careys, Alice and Phcebe, James K. Paulding, and John G. S::xe. Among journalists, Bennett aad Raymond and Greeley. Among scientists, Ormsby Mitchell, warrior as well as astronomer, and lovingly called by his soldiers “Old Stars;” the Drapers, splendid men, as I well know/ one of them my teacher, the other my classmate. Among inventors, Elias Howe, who, through tho sewing machine, did more to alleviate the toils of womanhood than any man that ever lived, and Professor Morse, who gave us magnetic telegraphy; the former doing his work with the needle the latter with the thunderbolt. Among physicians and surgeons, Joseph C. Hutchinson, and Marion Sims, and Dr. Valentine Mott, with the following epitaph which he ordered cut in honor of the Christian religion: “My implicit faith and hope is in a merciful Redeemer, who is the resurrection and the life. Amen and Amen.” This is our American Macbpelah, as sacred to us as tho Machpelah in Canaan, of which Jacob ottered that pastoral poem in one verse: “There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac, and liebekah his wife; and there 1 buried Leah.” At this Easter service I ask and answer What may seem a novel question, but it will he found, before I get through, a practical iend useful and tremenduous questiou: What will Resurrection Day do for the cemeteries? Firsts I remark,it will be their supernal beautification. At certain seasons it is custom try in all lands to strew ffowors ‘over the mounds of the departed. It may have been suggested by the fuot tbat [Christ's tomb wts in a garden. And when |I say a garden, 1 do not mean a garden of these latitudes. The late frosts of spring, [snd the early frosts of autumn are so near to each other that there ore only a few months of flowers in the Held. All the 'flowers wo see to-day had to be petted and co-zed, ad put under shelter or they would not have bloomed at all. They are : the children of the conservatories. But mt tala wsmdd, md through the most ol the 'year, the Holy Land is ail ablush with Aural opulence. You find all the royal family of floweirs there, some that you supposed indigenous to the far North, and others indigenous to the far South—the daisy and hyacinth, crocus and anemone, i tulip and water-lily, geranium and randscuius, mignonette and sweet marjoram. 'ln the college a* bey rout you may see Dr. 'Posts collection of about eighteen hundred kLids of Hoiv Lund flowers; while among trees an, the oak of frozen dimes, and hbe tamaris.c of the Sroutcs, wn'nut aad willow, IVy and hawthorn, ash and elder, jpine and sycamore. If such floral and botanical bsanties are the wild growths of the fields, think of what a garden must be in Palestine 1 An<* in such a garden Jesus Christ slept after, on the soldier’s sjear. His last drop of blood had eoaguUtfd. And then

see how appro—tato that all our cemeteries should be floralixed and tree-shaded. In June, Greenwood Is Brooklyn’s garden. “Well, then,” you say, “bow oan you make out that the Resurrection Day Will beautify the cemeteries? Win it not leave them a ploughed-up ground! On that day there will be an earthquake, snd will not this split the polished Aberdeen granite, as well as the plain slab that can afford bat the two words, *Our Mary,’ or *Our Charley*!” Well, I will tell you How Resurrection Day will beautify all tho cemeteriesIt will be by bringing up the faces that were to us once, and in our memories are to us now, more beautiful than any calla lily, and the forms that are to ns more graceful than any willow by the waters. Can you think of anything more beautiful than the reappearance of those from whom wo have been parted. I do not care which way the tree falls in the blast of the Judgment hurricane, or if the ploughshare that day shall turn under the last rose- leaf and the last chiua-aster, if out of the broken sod shall come the bodies of our loved ones not damaged, but irradiated. The idea of the resurrection gets easier to understand as I bear the phonograph unroll some voice that talked into it or sung into it a year ago, just before our friend’s decease. You turn the wire, and then come forth the very tones, the very accentutation, the very cough, the very song, of the person that breathed into it once, but is now departed. If a man can do that, cannot Almighty God, without half trying, return the voice of your departed? Ani if He can return the voice, why not the lips and the tongue and the throat that fashioned the voice? And if the lips and the tongue and the throat, why not then the brain that suggested the words? And if the brain, why not the nerves, of which the brain is the headquarters? And if He can return the nerves, why not the muscles, which are

les3 ingenious? And if the muscles, why not the bones, that, are less wonderful? And if the voice and the brain and the muscles and the bones, why not the entire body! If man can do the phonograph, God car .do the resurrection. WiU it be the same body that in the last day shall be reanimated? Yes, but infinitely improved. Our bodies change.every seven years, and yet, in one sense, it is the same body. On my wrist and the second finger of my right hand there is a scar. I made that at twelve years of age, when, disgusted at the presence of two warts, 1 took a red-hot iron and burned them off, and burned them out Since then my body has changed at least a half-dozen times, tout those scars prove it is the same body. And we never lose our Identity. If God can aad does sometimes rebuild a man five, six, ten times, in this world, is it mysterious that He can rebuild him once more, and that in the resurrection? If He can do it ten times, I think He can do it eleven times. Then look at the seventeen-year locusts. For sventeen years gone, at the end or seventeen years they appear, and by rubbing the hind leg against the wing make that rattle at which all the husbandmen and vine dressers tremble as the insec tile host tages up the march of devastation. Resurrection every seventeen years I

Another consideration makes the idea of resurrection easier. God made Adam. He was not fashioned after any model. There had never been a human organism, and so there was nothin? to copy. At the first attempt God made a perfect man. He made him out of the dust of th 3 earth. If out of ordinary dust of the earth and without a model God could make a perfect man, surely out of tha extraordinary dust of the mortal body, and with millions of models, God can make each one of us a perfect being in the Resurrection. Surely the last undertaking would not be greater than the firat. Seethe gospel algebra: ordinary dust minus a model equals a perfect man; extraordinary dust and plus a model equals a resurrection body. Myuteries about it? Oh yes; that is one reason why I believe it. It would not be much of a God who could do things only as far as I can understand. Mysteries? Oh, yes; but no more ;<bout tho resurrection of your body than about its present existence. 1 will explain to you the la3t mystery of the resurrection, and make it a 3 plain to yon as that two and two make four, if you will tell me how your mind, which is entirely independent of your body, can act upon your body so that at your will your eyes open, or your foot walks, or your hand is extended. So I find nothing in the Bible statement concerning the resurrection that staggers me for a moment. All doubts clear from my mind, I say that the cemeteries, however beautiful now, will be more bcuutif ul_ vehen_ltha. hnd ies of our loved ones come up.

They will come in improved condition. They wilt come up rested. The most of them lay down at the last very tired. Ho w often you have heard them say: “X am so tired!” The factis, it is a tireJ World. It I should go through this audience, and go around the wofld, I could not fi.id a person in any style of life ignorant of the sensation of fatigue. Ido not believe there are tflfty persons in this audience who are not tired. Your head is tired, or your back is ired, or your foot is tirs l or yoar brain is tired, or your nerves are tired. Long journeying, or business application, or bereavement, or sickness have put on you heayy weights. So the vast majority of those who went out of this world went out fatigued. About the poorest place to rest in is this world Its atmosphere, its surroundings, and even its hilarities are exhausting. So God stops our earthly life, and mercifully closes ths eyes, and quiets the feet, and folds the hands, und more especially rives quiescence to the lung and ha Art, that hava not had ten minutes’ rest from the first resp.rationand the first b sat. If a drummer-boy were compelled in the army to b jet his drum for twenty four hours without stopping his officer would be court-m irtialled for cruelty. If the drummer-boy should be commanded to beat bis drum for a week without ceasing, day and night, he would die in attempting it. But under your vestment is a poor heart that began its drum-beat for the march of life thirty or forty or sixty or eighty years ago, and it has had no furlough by day or night; and, whether in conscious or com itose state, it went right on, for if it had stopped seven seconds your life would have closed. And your heart will heap going until some time after your spirit has flown, for the auscultator says that after the last expiration of lune and the last throb of pulse, and alter the spirit Is released; tiia heart keeps on beating for a time. Wbat a mercy, then, it is that the grave is tbe place where tb.it wondrous machinery of ventricle and artery can halt I Under the healthful chemistry of the soil all the wear and tear of nerve wad muscle and bono will be subtracted and that bath of good, fresh, clean soil will wash off the last ache, and then some of the same style of dust out of which tho body of Adam was constructed may be infused into tbe resurrection body. How can the bodies of the human race, which had no Tapianisbment from the dust since toe time of Adam in Paradise, get any recuperation from the storehouse from yrbich he was constructed without our going back into the dust! That original, life - giving material bavins been added to the body aa it once was. and alt the defects left behind, what n body will be the

resurrection body? And will not femJmh of thousands of such appearing above the Gowanus Heights make Greenwood more beautiful than any June morning after a shower? The dust of the earth being the original materini for the fashioning of the first human being, we have to go hack to the samo plate to get a perfect body. Factories are apt to be rough places, and those who toil In them have their garments grimy and their hands smutched. But who cares for that, when they turn out for us beautiful musical Instruments or exquisite upholstery! What though the grave is a rough place, If is a resurrection-body manufactory, and from it shall come the radiant ana resplendent forms of OHr friends on the brightest morning the world ever saw. You put into a factory cotton, and it comes out apparel. You put into a factory lumber and lead, and it comes out piano 3 aad organs. And so into the factory of the grave you put in pneumonias and consumptions, and they come out health. You put in groans, and they come out hallellujahs. For us, on the final day, the most attractive places will not be the parks or the gardens or the palaces, but the cemeteries. We are not told in what season that day will come. If it should be winter, those who come up will be more lustrous than the snow that covered them. If in the autumn, those who come up will be more gorgeous than the woods alter tbe frosts have pencilled them. If in the spring, Ihe bloom on which they tread will be dull compered with the rubicund of their cheeks. Ob the perfect resurrection body! Almost every one has some.-defective spot in bis physical constitution: a dull ear, or a dim eye, or a rheumatic foot, or a neuralgic brow, or a twisted muscle, or a weak side, or au inflamed tonsil, or some point at which the east wind or a season of overwork assau.ts him. But the resurrection body shall be without oue weak spot, and all that the doctors and nurses and apothe caries of earth will thereafter have to do will be to re3t without interruption after the broken nights of their earthly existence. Not only will that day be the beautification of well kept cemeteries, but some of the graveyards that have been neglected, and been the pasture ground for -cattle and rooting-places for swine, will for the first time have attr > ctiveness given them. It was a shame that in that place ungrateful generations planted no trees and twisted no garlands, and sculptured no marble for their Christian ancestry; but on the day of which I speak the resurrection shall make the place of their feet glorious. From under tbe shadow of- the church, where they slumbered among nettles and mullein stalks and thistles, and slabs aslant, they shall rise with a glory that shall flash the windows of the village church, and by the bell-tower that used to Call them to worship, and above the old spire beside which their prayers formerly ascended. What triumphal procession never did for a street, what an oratorio never did for an academy, what an orator never did for a brilliant auditory, what obelisk never did for a king. Resurrection morn will do for all the cemeteries. This Easter tells us that in Christ’s resurrection, our resurrection if we are His, and the resurrection of all the pious dead, is assured, for He * was “the first fruits of them that slept” Renan says He did not rise, but five hundred aad eighty witnesses, sixty of them Christ’s enemies, say He did rise, for they saw Him after he had risen. If He did not rise how did sixty armed soldiers let him get away! Surely sixty living soldiers ought to be able to keep one head man! Blessed be God! He did get away. After His resurrection Mary Magdalene saw Him. Cleopas saw Him. Ten diosiples in an upper room at Jerusalem saw Him. On a mountain the eleven saw Him. Five hundred at once saw Him. Professor Ernest Renan, who did not see Him, will excuse us for taking the testi mony of the five hundred and eighty who did see Him. Yes, yes; he got away. „And that makes me sure that our departed loved ones and we ourselves shall get away. Freed Himself from the shackles of clod. He is not going to leave us and ours in the lurch. There will be no door-knob on the inside of the fairly sepulchre;*for we can not come out, of ‘Ourselves; but, there is a door-knob on the outside, and that Jesus shall lay hold or, und opening, will say: “Uood morning 1 You have slept long enough I Arise! Arise 1” - And then what flutter of wings, and what flashing of rekindled oyes, and what gladsome rushing across the family lot, with cries of “Father, is that you?” “Mother, is that youi” My darling, is that you?” “dow you all have changed!” The cough gone, the croup gone, the consumption gone, ihe paralysis gone, the weariness gone. Come, let us uscend together! The older ones first, the younger ones nextl Quick now, get into linal The sky ward procession lias already started! Steer now by that embankment of cloud for the nearest gate 1” And os we ascend, on one side the earth gets smaller until it is no larger than a mountain, and smaller until it Is no larger than a palace, and smaller until it is no larger than a ship, and smaller until it is ho larger than a wheel, ana smaller until it is no larger thao a speck. Farewell, dis solving earth! But on the other side, as we rise, heaven at first appears no larger than your hand. And nearer it looks like a chariot, and nearer it looks like a throne, and nearerlooks like a star, and nearer it looks like a sun, and nearer it looks like a universe. Hail, sceptres that shall always wave! Hall, anthems that shall always roil! Hail, companiou ships never again to be broken, and friend ships never again to part! Tbat is what Resurrection Day will do for all the cemete ries and graveyards from the Machpelah that was opened by Father Abraham in Hebron to the a.acbpelah yesterday consecrated. And that mages I .ady Huntington’s immortal rhythm most apposite: When Thou, my ri hteous Judge, shalt come To take Thy ransomed people home. Shall I among them standi Shall such a worthless worm as I, , • Who sometimes am afraid to die. Be found at Thy right hand! Among Thy saints let me be found, Whene erth’ archangel’s trump shall sound. To see Thy smiling face; Then loudest of the throng I’ll sing; While heaven’s resounding arches ring V\ ith shouts of sovereign grace;