Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1893 — EASTER FLOWERS. [ARTICLE]

EASTER FLOWERS.

‘‘Consider athe Lilies How They Grow.” Tho of the ISosurrpr.Uon— Earth and Sett SliuU <Hv«? Up Vlieir D<-a<l— Dr. Talmagc's Sermon. . . . 1 L ' -l- - I >;\ Tabvr.gc preached at Brooklyn last Siimktv.- Sal >je.-■ t: 'The -Sleepers Av.n*( red." Text: I Cor. xv, 20 —"Now is Christ risen from the de!id-i:.iid bi-;stii-K-itiK* lirst -f-ruirs of them that .slept.” He said: 011 this glorious Easter morning, amid the music and the flowers, ,1 give you Christian salulalien. This morning Russian meeting Russian on the. streets of St. Petersburg hails him with the salutation. “Christ is risen!" and is answered -"by"his friend “nr salutation. “He is risen indeed!" In ' some parts of, England and Ireland to this very "day there is the superstition that on Easter niornir.o- the sun dances in the heavens, and well may we forgive such a superstition, which illustrates 11m . fact that the natural world seem:.; to sympathize with the spiritual: Hail. Easter morning: Flowers! Flowers! All of them u-voice, all,of them a-tonguc. all of them full of gpilch to-day. I bend over one of ihe ill lies, and I hear it say, “Con sidcr the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin, vet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one oU these. 41 I bend over a rose, and it seems to whisper. ‘‘l am the rose of Sharon.” And then I stand and listen. 'From all sides there comes the chorus of flowers, saying, “If God so clothed the grass of the field, which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe vou, Q ye of little faith?” Flowers! Flowers! Braid them into the bride’s hair. Flowers! Flowers! Strew them over the graves of the dead—sweet prophecy of the resurrection. Flowers! Flowers! Twist them into a garland for my Lord Jesus on Easter morning. “Glory be to the Father, audio the Sen, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.” I care not how labyrinthine the mausoleum or how costly the sarcophagus or however beautifulty partorred the family grounds, we want them all broken up by the Lord of the resurrection. They must come o-t. Father and mother -they must come out. Husband and wife —they must come out. Our darlifig children —they: must come out. The eyes that we close with such trembling fingers must open again in the radiance of that morn. The arms wC folded in dust must join ours in an embrace of. reunion. , The voice that was hushed in our dwelling must be return'd. "Oh, how long some of you seem to be waiting — waiting for the, resurrection,* waitAnd for these broken hearts today I make a soft, cool bandage out of Easter flowers. If I should come to you*this morngreat conquerors of the world, you would say Alexander, Csesar, Philip, Napoleon I. Ah, my friends, you have, forgotten to mention the name of a greater conqueror, than All these —a cruel, a ghastly conqueror. He rode on a black horse across Waterloo and Atlanta and Chalons, the bloody hoofs crushing the hearts of nations. It is the conqueror Death. He carried a black flag, and he takes no prisoners. He digs a trench across the hemispheres and tills it with the carcasses of nations. Fifty times would the world have been depopulated had not God kept making new generations. Fifty times the world would have swung lifeless through the air—no man on the mountain, no man on the sea, an abandoned ship plowing through immensity. Again and again has lie done this work with all generations. He is a monarch as well as a conqueror; his palace a sepulcher; his fountains the falling tears of a world. Blessed be God. in the light of this Easter morning I sec the propecy that his scepter shall be brokoiymnd his palace shall be ’The hour is Coming when all wh» are in their graves shall come forth. Christ risen, we shall rise. Jesus “the first fruits of them that slept, ” Now, around this doctrine of the resurrection there are a great many mysteries. Why, putting down one kind of flower seed, comes there up this flower of this color? Why, putting down another flower seed, eomes there up a flower of this color? One flower white, another flower yellow, another flower crimson. Why the difference, when the seeds look to be very much alike—are very much alike? Explain those things. Explain that wart on the finger. Explain why the oak leaf is different from the leaf of the hickory. Tell me how the Lord Almighty can turn the chariot of his omnipotence on a rose leaf.. You ask me "questions about the resurrection I cannot answer. I will ask you a thousand questions about everyday life you cannot answer. You say that “the human body changes every seven years, and by seventy years of age a man has had ten bodies. In the resurrection which will come up?” You say: man will die and his body crumble into the dust, and that dust be taken up into the life of the vegetable. An animal may eat the vegetables; men eat the animal. In the resurrection

thatbodv distributed in so many directions, how shall it be up?” Have -you any mormquestions of this style to ask? -Come on and ask them. Ido not pretend to-an-swer them." I fait back upon the announcement of God's word. “All who arc in their •graves shall come forth." York to Liverpool at every few miles where a steamer went down, departed spirits coming back hovering over the wave. There is where the City of Boston perished. Found at last. There is where the President perished. Steamer found at last. There is where the Central xYmerica went down. Spirits hovering— hundreds of spirits hpvering. waiting for the reunion of body and soul. Out on the prairie a spirit alights. There is where a traveler died in the..sfifl®£ 'Crash! goes Westminster abbey, and the poets and orators come forth — wonderful mingling of good and bad! Crash! go the pyramids of Egypt, and the monarchs come forth. Who can sketch the scene? I suppose that one moment before the general rising there will be an entire silence, save as you hear the grinding of a wheel or a clatter of the hoofs of a procession passing into the cemetery. Silence on the side of the mountain. Silence down in the valleys and far out into the sea.- Silence. But in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, as the archangel’s- trumpet comes pealing, rolling, crashing, across mountain and ocean, the earth will give one terrific shudder, and the graves of the dead will heave like the waters of the sea. and Ostend an'd Sebastopol and Chalons will j stalk forth in the lurid air, and the drowned will come up and wring out their wet locks above the billow, and all the land and all the sea become, one moving mass of ’life—all faces, all ages, all conditions gazing in one direction and upon one throne —the throne of resurrection. -‘All who are in their graves shall come forth. ” In the first place, I remark, in regard to your resurrection body, it will be a glorious body. The body we have now is a mere skeleton of of what it. would have been if sin had not marred and defaced it. Take the most exquisite statue that was ever made by an artist and chip it, here and chip it there with a chisel and batter and bruise it here and i there and then stand it out into the ’ storms of a hundred years, and the beauty -would be gone. Well, the human body has been chipped and battered and bruised and damaged with the storms of thousands of ye&i’s —the physical defects of other generations coming down from generation to generation, we inheriting the infelicities of past generations, but in the morning of the resurrection the body will be adorned and beautified according to the original model. And there is no such difference between a gymnast and an emaciated wretch in a lazaretto as there will be a difference be tween our bodies as they are now and our resurrected forms. In this world the most impressive thing, the most expressive thin gis the human face, but that, face is veiled with the griefs of a thousand years, but in the"resurrection morn that veil will be taken away from the face, and the noonday sun is dull and dim and stupid compared with the outflaming glories of the countenances of the saved. When those laces of the righteous, those resur rected faces, turn toward the gate or look up toward the throne, it will be like the dawning of a new morning on the bosom of everlasting day. O. glorious, resurrected body! But I remark also, in regard to that body which you are to get in _the resurrection, it will be an -immortal body. These bodies are wasting away. Somebody has said as soon as we begin to live w T e begin to die. Unless we keep putting the fuel into the furnace the f urnace dies out. The blood vessels are canals taking the breadstuffs to all parts of the system. We must be reconstructed hour by hour, day by day. Sickness and death are all the time trying to get their prey under the tenement, or to push us off the embankment of the grave. But, blessed be God, in the resurrection we will get a body immortal. I will go further and say, in regard to that body which you are to get in the resurrection it will be a powerful body. We walk fatigued; we lift a few hundred pounds, and we are exhausted; unarmed we meet a wild beast, and we must run or fly or. Climb or dodge because we are incompetent to meet it; we toil eight or ten hours vigorously, and then we are weary, but in the resurrection We are to have a body that never gets tired. Is it not a glorious thought? Sometimes in this world we feel we would like to have such a body as that. There is so much work to be done for Christ, there are so many tears to be wiped away, there are so many burdens to lift, there is so much to be achieved folr Christ, we sometimes wish that from January first to tfle last of December we could toil on without stopping to sleep, or take any recreation, or to rest.' or even to take food—that we could toil right on without stopping a moment in our work of commend ing Christ and heaven to all ppoplc. But we all get tired. It is characteristic of the human body in this condition; we must, get tired. Is it not a glorious thought that after awhile we are going to have a body that will never get weary? Oh, glorious resurrection day! Gladly will I fling aside this : poor body of sip and fling it into the , tomb if at thy bidding Idffiall have a body that never wearies.