The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-06-12


could not find a person in any style of
life ignorant of the sensation of fatigue.
l do not believe 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, or your nerves
are tired. Long journeying, or business
application, or bereavement, or sickness
have 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 world.
It's atmosphere, its surroundings, and
even it's hilarities are exhausting. So
God stops our earthly life, and more
especially gives quiescenee to the lung
and heart, that have not had ten min
utes' rest from the first respiration and
the first beat. If drummer-boy were
compelled in the army to beat his drum
for twenty-tour 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 .vestment is 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 comatoSe state,
it went right on, for if it had stopped
seven seconds your life would have
closed. And your heart will keep GO
ing 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, then the heart keeps on
beating for time.
What a mercy, then, it is that the
grave is the place where that wondrous
machinery of ventricle and artery can
halt! Under the healthful chemistry
of the soil all the wear and tear of nerve
and muscle and bone 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 the body of Adam was con-
structed may be infused into the resur-
rection body. How can the bodies of
the human race, which have had no re-
punishment from the dust since the
time of Adam in paradise, get
any recuperation from the store
house from which he was con-
structed without our going back
into the dust? That original, life-giv-
ing material having been added to the
body as it once was, and all the defects
left behind, what a body will be the
resurrection body! And will not hun
dreds of thousands of such appearing
above Gowanus Heights make Green
wood more beautiful than any June
morning after shower? The dust of
the earth being the original material
for the fashioning of the first human be-
ing, we have to go back to the same
place to get a perfect body. Factories
are apt to be rough places, and
those who toll 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 ex-
quisite upholstery! What though the
grave is rough place, it is a resurrec-
tion-body mandatory, 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 factory lumber and lead,
and it comes out pianos and organs.
And so into the factory of the grave you
put in pneumOnias and consumptions,
a. nd fh0ry ~ =
groans, and they come out hallelujahs.
For us, on the final day, the most at
tractive places will not be the parks or
the gardens or the palaces, but the
cemeteries.
And then what 1utter of wings, and
what flashing of rekindled eyes, and
what gladstone rushing across the fami-
ly lot, with cries of ''Father, is that
you?" Mother, is that you?" 'My
darling, is that you?" ''How you all
have changed! The cough gone, the
Group gone, the consumption gone, the
paralysis gone, the WEAKNESS 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 cloud for
the nearest gatep And as we as
cend, on one side the earth gets
smaller until it is no larger
than mountain, and smaller until it is
no larger than palace. and smaller
until it is no larger than ship, and
smaller until it is no larger than a
wheel, and smaller until it is no larger
than a speck. Farewell, dissolYing
earth! But on the other side, as we
rise, Heaven at first appears no larger
than your hand. And nearer it looks
like chariot, and nearer it looks like
throne, and nearer it looks like star.
and nearer it looks like a sun, and
nearer it looks like universe. Hail,
scepters that shall always wave! Hail,
anthems that shall always roll! Hail,
comprehensive never again to be bro
ken, and friendships never again to part!
That is what Resurrection Day will
do for all the cemeteries and grave
yards from the Maehpelah that was
opened by Father Abraham in Hebron
to the Machpelah yesterday consecrated.
A m +hof oh T