Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-04-12
DR.. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
His Subject "Machpelah; or, Easter
Thoughts"
Preached at the Academy Of Music,
Brooklyn, New York.


TEXT: "And the field of Ephron, sUhich
,cns in Mdchpeidh Uhfch tcds before Mdnsre,
the field and the care Which iods therein.
and all the trees that tcere ia the field, that
,cere IN all the borders round about, tDere
made sure unto Abraham. Gen. xiii,
II, Is.
Here is the first cemetery ever laid out.
Machpelah was its name. 1t was an arbores-
cent beauty where the wound of death was
bandaged with foliage. Abraham. a rich man,
not being able to bride the King Of Terrors
proposes here, as far as possible, to cover up
up his 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 one 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 sympathy for Ahra-
ham, refusing to take anything
for it, now sticks on big price-four hun
! dred shekels of silver This cemetery lot is
paid for, and the transfer made in the pres
ence of witnesses in public place, for there
swere no deeds and no halls of record in those
early times. Then in cavern of limestone
rock Abraham put Sarah, and, few years
after, himself followed, and then Isaac and
Rebekah, and then Jacob and Leah. EN-
! powered picturesque and memorable Mach
palah! That Gods acre. dedicated by
Abraham has been the mother of innumera-
/ BILE mortuary observances The metropolis
| of every civilized land has WED with its me-
! tropolis.
The most beautiful hills of Europe outside
the great cities are covered with obelisk and
funeral vase and arched gateways and coli
umns and parterres in honor of the inhu-
mated The Appian Way of Rome was
! bordered by sepulchral commemorations.
| For this purpose Pisa has its arcades of mar
| BILE sculptured into exquisite bas reliefs and
the features of dear faces that have van
| ished. Genoa has its terraces cut into
/ tombs; and Constantinople covers with ey-
| press the silent habitations; and Paris has its
! Pere-Lachaise on whose height rests Balzac
and David and Marshal Ney and Cuvier and
La Place and Moliere and mighty group
! of warriors and poets and painters and mu-
/ sicians. In all foreign nations utmost genius
4 on all sides Is expended in the work of IN
terment, naturalization and Incarceration.
| Our own country consents to be second to
1 none in respect to the lifeless body Every
/ city and town and neighborhood of any in
| telllgenee or virtue has, not many miles
| away, its sacred Enclosure, where affection
| has engaged sculptor's chisel and florists
! spade and artificer in metals. Our own city
! has shown its religion as well as its art, in
| the manner in which it holds the memory OF
! those who have passed forever away, by its
| Cypress Hills and its Evergreens and its Cal
vary and 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 over
! look the sea, and by lakes embosomed in an
! Eden of flowers, our American Westminster
| Abbey, an Acropolis of mortuary architec-
| ture, Pantheon of mighty ones assembled
| elegies in stone Iliads in marble, whole gen
] fnr.D fhnr
tons to join them. No dormitory of breath
4 less sleepers in all the world has SO many
| mighty dead.
Among preachers of the gospel, Bethune
and Thomas De Witt, and Bishop James and
! Tying and 'Abcel the missionary, and
Beecher and Buddington and McClintock
and Inskip and Bangs and Chaplin and Noah
/ SchencE and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among
musicians, the renowned GottSrhaik and the
! holy Thomas Hastings. Among the philau-
| thropists Peter Cooper and Isaac l. Hopper
and Lucretia Mott and Isabella Graham,
! and Henry Bergh the apostle of mercy to
the brute creation. Among the literati, the
1 Carys Alice and Phoebe, James K. Paulding
and John G. Sake. Among the journalists,
! Bennett and Raymond and Greeley. Among
scientists, Ormsby Mitchell, warrior as well
! as astronomer. and lovingly called by his
soldiers "0ld Stars the Diapers, splendid
/ men, as | well know, one of them my
| teacher, the other my classlnate
Among inventors Elias Howe, who,
! through the sewing machine did more to
| alleviate the tolls 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 W it'll the thunderbolt. Among physi-
| clans and surgeons Joseph c. Hutchinson,
and Marion Sims, and Dr.. Valentine Mott,
| with the following epitaph VIII oh he ordered
cut in honor of the Christian religion; my
implicit faith and hope is in mercifnl Re
| deemer, who is q resurrection and the life.
Amen and Amen" This is our American
Maehpelah, as sacred TO us as the Mach
! pelah in Canaan, of which jacob uttered that
| pastoral poem in one verse: There they
/ buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife; there
they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and
there / buried Leah"
/ AT this Easter service I ask and answer
what may seem n novel question, but it will
/ be found, before [ get through, practical
and useful and tremendous question. What
will Resurrection day Ito for the cemeteries?
/ First, l remark it will be their supernatural
/ Identification. At certain seasons it is GUS
tomary in all lands to strcw flowers over
/ the mounds of the departed 1t may have
been suggested by the fact that Christ's
/ tomb was in a garden And when l say
! garden | do not mean garden of these latl-
tudes The lato frosts of spring and the
/ early frosts of autumn are so near to each
7
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 the children of the
| conserv atories. But at this season and
| through the most of the year, the Holy Land
is all ablush with floral opulence. You find
/ all the royal family of flowers there, some
| thatyou supposed Indigenous to the far north,
and others Indigenous to the far south-the
daisy aud hysclnth, crocus and anemone,
| tulip and water hly, geranium and ranuncu
| lus mignonette and sweet marjoram.
In the college Mt Beyrout you may see
DR.. Posts collection of about eighteen hun
! bred kinds of holy Land flowers; while
among the trees are the oak of frozen climes.
and the tamarisk Of the tropics, walnut and
willow, ivy and hawthorn, ash and elder
pine and sycamore. If such floral and bo-
tanica beauties are the wild growths of the
fields think of what garden must be in Pal
estine! And in stlch garden Jesus Christ
slept after, On the soldiers spear. His last
drop of blood had coagulated. And then see
1 how appropriate that all our cemeteries
should be foralzed and tree shaded. In June
Greenwood is Brooklyn's garden.
well then you say, how can you
make out that the Resurrection day will
beautify the cemeteries? VIII it not leave
them plowed up ground? On that day
there will be an earthquake, and will not this
split the polished Aberdeen granite, as well
] as Tue pam SidD LilaU can dlIOfO Out tine TWO
words. Our Mary Or Our Charley"
Well, l will tell you how Resurrection day
will beautify all the cemeteries. 1t will be by
bringing up the faces that were to us once, and
in our memories are to us now, more beauti-
full than any Gala 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 temperance of those
from whom we have been parted? | do not
care which way the tree falls in the blast OF
the judgment hurricane, or If the plowsnare
that day shall turn under 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 hear the photograph unroll
some voice that talked into it or sung into it
year ago, just before our friends decease.
You turn the wire, and then come forth the
very tones, the very accentuation, the very
cough, the very song of the person that
! breathed into it once, but is now departed If
man can do that. 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 tongue and the
throat, why not then the brain that sug-
/ gested the words? And if the brain, why not
the nerves. Of which the brain is the head
/ quarters? And If he car return the nerves,
why not the muscles, which are less in
/ eeniousf And If the muscles why not che
! bones, that are less wonderful? And if the
voice and the brain and the muscles and the
bones, why not the entire bodyg II man can
DO the phonograph, Col can do the resurrec-
ton. viii it be the same body that in the
last day shall be terminated? Yes but in