The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1872-12-03
THE LAST GREAT DAY.

One leading feature OF the great day OF
reckoning the one, perhaps, more than any
other pressed upon our regard in Holy Writ
shall be its suddenness, its unexpectedness,
the worlds unpreparedness fer it. 1t is to
come as thief in the night. 1t is to take the
world by surprise One cannot help often
fancying to what a sharp, abrupt and awful
close the busy movements of the busy world
shall then be brought. The day before its last
shall see them all going on as usual. Over
one-half the globe it's inhabitants shall be eat
ing and drinking, buying and selling, marry
ing and giving in marriage the merchant in
the market-place calculating his gains the
scholar at his desk porting over the ancient
page the reapers in the field plying their
harvest task. And there in the quiet church.
yard group shall have gathered round the
last grave, the coffin shall have been lowered
down into it, and the grave-digger have grasp
ed the shovel to cover up the dead. Over the
other half of the globe, its inhabitants shall
have laid themselves down to rest and the
merchant shall be dreaming there of the gains
that to-morrow's sales are to realize and the
politician shall be dreaming of the measures
that tomorrow, in the senate house, he is to
PROPOSE of the grafton that tomorrow he is
to deliver and bright visions of many happy
days to come shall be haunting many youth
full slumberer's fancy ; and the ballroom and
the banquet-room shall have hung out their
glittering lights, and spread their inviting
tables, and the smile, and the dance, the ring
ing laugh, and the jovial song, shall all be
there. Just then, without a herald sent, or
note of warning given the Son of Man shall
descend from heaven with shout, with the
voice of the archangel, and the trump of God.
That trumpet call of heaven shall span at
once the globe, and be heard the same moment
at either pole. AT it's summons, the million
sleepers of the earth shall all rise up from their
last repose, their dreamings of earthly to-
morrows all cut short. A shivering terror,
like that which filed Belshazzar's hall, shall
run through the ballroom and the banquet
room, and the jest half uttered, the song half
sung, they shall stare upon one another there
in pale alright In the busy market-pla
the buyer shall forget the price he offered
the seller the price he asked. AT his desk the
pen shall drop from the writer's hand. The
reapers shall fling the gathered sheaves from
their hands. And in that quiet chureh-yard
that group around the grave shall be convulsed
with wonder as the coffin bursts and the dead
man springs to life and stands up by their
side.
For that trumpet call of heaven shall do
more than waken all the sleeping and arrest
all the living inhabitants of the globe. 1t
shall go where sound never went before-it
shall do what sound never did. 1t shall pierce
the stony monuments it shall penetrate the
grassy mound-far down through many a
fathom of the ebbing waters shall it make its
way-over the deep bed of ocean shall it roll
and the sea shall give up at once the dead
that are in it, and the earth the dead that are
there. And all the dead, small and great
shall arise. And in amoment, in the twinkling
of an eye, by the forthgoing of one fiat of the
Omnipotent, over all the vast congregation of
the living with which that still vaster congre-
cation of the dead is to mingle--over all the
bodies of the living change shall pass that
shall make them like to those new bodies of
the raised. And all shall be caught up to-
gether in the clouds to meet the Lord in the
air, temporarily uplifted above those fires by
which the world that now is. and all these its
present works, are to be burnt up. And the
vast company as it rises from the earth shall
meet another, perhaps vaster company, de-
scending from the skies. For he who shall
that day come in the clouds Of heaven with
power and great glory shall come with all his
holy angels with him and there, too, shall be
those angels that lost their first estate, and
who had been reserved in everlasting chains
under darkness unto the judgment of the great
day: heaven, earth, hell-coming thus for
once together-that out of that intervening
earth, heaven and he'll might gather all that
each could claim as it's own, and then with a
contrast heightened by that one meeting, part
forever.-Dr. Hdn7aa.
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