Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1894 — EASTER MOOS. [ARTICLE]

EASTER MOOS.

“I Am the Resurrection And the Life:” Appropriate Sermon and Ceremonies at the Brooklyn Tabernacle—Dr. Talmage’s Easter Sermon. The Easter services at the Brooklyn Tabernacle were attended by profuse flora! decorations and a musical programme of unusual, excellence. In the forenoon the Rev. Dr. Talmage delivered an eloquent sermon on “Easter in Greenwood,” the text being taken from Genesis xxiii, 18. “And the field of Hebron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre;the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham.” Ho said: Here is the first cemetery ever laid out. Machpelah was its name. It was an arborescent beauty, where the wound of death was bandaged with foliage. Abraham, a rich man, not being able to bribe, the king of terrors, proposes he re as far aspossible to cover up the ravages. He had no doubt previously noticed this region, and now that Sarah,his wife, had died —that remarkable person who at ninety years of age had born to her the son Isaac and who now, after she had reached 127 years, had expired Abraham is negotiating for a family plot for her last slumber. Ephron owned this real estate, and after, in mock sympathy for Abraham, refusing to take anything for it, now sticks on a big price—4oo shekels of silver. The cemetery lot is paid for, and the transfer made in the presence of witnesses in public, for there were no deeds and no halls of record in those early 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 and memorable Machpelah! 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.

All the world knows Of our Greenwood, with now about 270,000 inhabitants sleeping among the hills that overlook the sea. and by lakes embosomed in an Eden of flowers, our American Westminster Abbey, an Acropolis of mortuary architecture, a Pantheon of mighty ones ascended, elegies in stone, Iliads in marble, whole generations in peace waitIr.g for other—generations to join them. No dormitory of breathless sleepers in all the world has so many mighty dead. At this Easter servic e I ask and answer what may seem a novel question, but it will be found, before I get through, a practical and useful and tremendous question. What will resurrection day do for the cemeteries? First, I remark it will be their supqrnul beautification. Ax certain seasons it is customary in all lands to strew flowers over the mounds of the departed. It may have been suggested by the fact that Christ’s tomb was in a garden: And when I say a garden I do not mean a garden of these latitudes. The late frosts of spring and the early frosts of autumn are so near each other that there are only a few months of flowers in the field. All the flowers we see to-day had to be petted and coaxed and put under shelter or they would not have bloomed at all. They are children or the conservatories. But at this season and through most of the year the holy land is all ablush .with floral opulence. “Well, then,” you say, “how can you make out that the resurrection day will beautify the cemeteries? Will it not leave them a plowed up ground? On this day there will be an earthquake, and will not this split the polished Aberdeen granite as well as the plain slab that can afford but two words —‘Our Mary’ or ‘Our Charley?’” Well, I will tell you how resurrection day will beautify all the cemeteries. It will be by bringing up the faces there were to us •once and in our memories are to us now more beautiful than any calla lily and the forms that are to us more graceful than any willow by the waters. Can you think of anything more beautiful than the reappearance of those from whom we have been parted? Ido not care which way the tree falls in the blast of the judgment hurricane, or if the plowshare that day shall turn the last rose leaf and the last China 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 hear the phonograph unroll some voice that talked into it a year a<ro, just before our friend’s decease. You touch the lever, and then come forth the very tones, the very song of the person that breathed into it once, but is now departed. If a man can dothat.' cannot Almighty God, without half trying, return the voice of your departed? And 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 throat, and the tongue, why not 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 the less ingenious? And if the muscles, why not the bones, that are less wonderful? And if the voice, and the brain, and the mus-

cles, and the bones, why not the entire body ? If man can do the phonograph, God can do the resurrection. We never lose our identity. If God can and 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 seventeenyear locusts. For sevenreen years gone, at the end of 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 insegtile host takes up the march of devastation. Resurrectisn every seventeen years; a wonderful fact. 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 nothing to copy. At the first attempt God made a perfect man. He made him out of the dust of the earth, If out of ordinary dust of the earth and without a model God could make a perfect man, surely out of the extraordinary dust of 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 first. See the gospel algebra —ordinary dust minus a model equals a perfect man; extraordinary dust and plus a model equals a resurrection body. Mysteries 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 about the resurrection of your body than about its present existence. I do not believe that there are fifty persons in this audience who are not tired Your head is tired, or your back is tired, or your foot is tired, or your brain is tired. Long journeying, or business application, bereavement, or sickness has put on you heavy 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 i world. Its atmosphere, its sunsi roundings, and even its hilarities are i exhausting. So God stops our earthly life, and mercifully closes the eyes, and more especially gives the quiescence to the lung and heart, that have not had ten minutes’ rest from the first respiration and the first beat. If a drummer boy were compelled in the armv to beat his drum for twent-four hours without stopping, his officer would be court-martialed for cruelty. If the drummer boy should be commanded to beat his drum for a week, without ceasing, day and night, he would die in attempting it. But under your vestj ment is a poor heart that began its drumbeat for the march of life thirty or forty or sixty or eighty years ago, j and it has had no furlough by night ; or day, and whether in conscious or comatose state it went right on, for if it had stopped seven seconds your life would have closed. And your heart will keep going until some time after your spirit has flown, for the auscultator says that after the last expiration of lung and the last throb of pulse, and after the spirit is released, the heartTkeeps on beating for a time. What a mercy, then, it is that the grave is the place where that wondrous machinery of ventricle and artery can halt! 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, it is a resurrection body manufactory, and from it shall come the radiant and resplendent forms of our 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 they come out pianos and organs. And so into the factory of nthe grave you put in pneumonias and consumptions, and they come out health. You put in groans, and they come out hallelujahs. For us on the final day the most attractive places will not be the parks or the gardens, or the palaces, but the cemeteries. But the resurrection body shall be without one weak spot, and all that the nurses and doctors and apothecaries of earth will thereafter have to do will be to rest 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 rioting places for swine will for the first timehave attractiveness given them. - This Easter tells us that in Christ's resurrection is 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 580 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 dead man! Blessed be God! He did get away. There will be no doorknob on the inside of our family sepulcher, for we cannot come out of ourselves, but there is a doorknob on the outside, and that Jesus shall lay hold of and opening will say, “Good morning! You have slept long enough! Arise, arise!” And then what a flutter of wings, and what flashing of rekindled eyes, and what gladsome rush-

ing across the family lot with criei of “Father, is that you?” “Mother, is that you?” darling, is thal you?” “How you have all changed!* The cough gone, the croup gone, the consumption gone. paralysis gone, the weariness gone. Come, let us ascend together! The older ones first the younger ones next! Quick, now, get into line| The skyward procession has already started! Steer now by that embankment of clouds for the nearest gate!” Farewell, dissolving earth! Bui on the other side as we rise heaven at first appears no larger than youi hand. And nearer it looks like a chariot, and nearer it looks like a throne, and nearer it looks like a star, and nearer it looks like a sun, and nearer it looks like a universe. Hail, scepters that shall always wave! Hail, anthems that shall always roll! Hail, companions never again to part! That is what resurrection day will do for all the cemeteries and graveyards from the Machpelah that was opened by Father Abraham in Hebron to the Machpelah yesterday consecrated.