Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-04-07
MODERN MACHPELAHS
Our Cemeteries Suggest to DR.. Tai
" mage an Interesting Problem
REGARDING RESURRECTION DAY.
Easter Morning Thoughts on the Joyful
Meeting in Heaven
WHEN TIE GRAVE GIVES nP ITS DEAD
RIDING RESURRECTION DAY.
WHEN TEE GRAVE GIVES UP ITS DEAD
ESPECIAL TELEGRAM TO rHH DISPATCH,

fsPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THR DISPATCH,
BROOKLYN, April 6.-The Academy Of
Music was appropriately decorated to-day
for Easter service, and the regular artists OF
he Brooklyn Tabernacle were assisted by
eminent musical performers. The hymn
sung before sermon was:
We praise Thee, o God for the Son of Thy
love,
For Jesus who died and is now gone above.
The subject of DR.. Talmage's sermon was
'Machpelah: or, Easter Thoughts" 1t was
based On the words in Gen. xiii: II, IS:
"And the field Ephron, which was in Mach
pelah, which was before Mamre, the field
and the cave which was therein, and all the
trees that were in the field, that were in all
the borders round about, were made sure
unto Abraham" Following is the sermon
in full:
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, rich man,
no: being able to bribe the King of Terrors,
proposes here, as far as possible, to cover up
his ravages. He had no doubt previously
noticed this region, and now that Sarah, his
wife, had died-that remarkable woman, who at
9Oyears of age had born to her the son Isaac, and
who now, after she had reached l21 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 1t, now
sticks on big price-400 shekes of silver. This
cemetery lot is paid for, and the transfer made,
in the presence of witnesses in public place,
for there were no deeds and no halls of record in
those early days. Then
IN A CAVERN OF LIMESTONE ROCK
Abraham put Sarah. and, few years after,
himself followed. and then Isaac and Rebekah
and then Jacob and Leah. Embowered. pic
turesQue and memorable Maehpelah! That
''God's-acre" dedicated by Abraham has been
the mother of innumerabe mortuary observ-
Rnces. The metropolis of every civilized land
has We'd with its metropolis. The most beauti-
full hills of Europe outside the great cities are
covered with obelisk and funeral vase and
arched gateways and columns and parterres in
honor Of the inhumated. The Appian Way of
Rome was bOrdered by sepulchral commemora-
tions. For this purpose Pisa has its arcades OF
marble 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 cypress the ST.
lent habitatious; and Paris has its Pere la
Chaise, whose heights rest Balzac and David
and Marshal Ney and Cuvier and La Place
and Moliere, and a mighty group of warriors
and poets and painters and musicians. In al
foreign nations utmost genius on all sides is
expended in the work of interment. mummifi-
cation and incineration.
Our country consents to be sec
ond to none in respect to the lifeless
body. Every city and town and neighborhood
of any intelligence or virtue has, NOT many
miles away, iIs sacred inclosure where affec-
ton has engaged Sculptor's chisel and florists
spade and artifcer in metals. Our own city has
shown It's religion as well as its arr, in the man
ner in which it holds the memory of those who |
have passed forever away, by its Cypress /
Hills and its Evergreens and its Calvary and |
Holy Cross and Friends cemeteries. All the |
world knows of our Greenwood with now |
about $50, 900 inhabitants sleeping among hills |
that overlook the sea. and by lakes embOsomed |
IN an Eden of flowers. our American Westmi l. |
sier Abbey, an Acropols OF mortuary architec- |
ture, a Pantheon of mighty ones assembled, ele- |
gleS in stone, lllads in marble. whole genera
tiUns in peace,
WAITING FOR OTHER GENERATIONS
TO join them. No dormitory of breathless
sleepers in all the world has so many mighty
dead. Among preachers of the gospel, Beth
une and Thomas Dewitt, and Bishop James
and Tying, and Abeel the missionary. and |
Beecher and Buddington and McClintock and |
1nskip and Bangs and Chaplin and Noah |
Schenck and Sa auel Hanson Cox Among |
musicians, the renowned Gottschalk and the |
holy Thomas Hastings. Among philanthro- |
pists, Peter Cooper and Isaac T. Hopper and |
Lucretia Mott and Isabella Graham, and Henry |
Bergh, the apostle of mercy to the brute crea-
tion. Among the literati the Careys, Alice |
and Phoebe, James X Paulding, and John 6. |
SAKE. Among journalists, Bennett and Ray
mond and Greeley. Among scientists Ormsby !
Mitchell, warrior well as astronomer and |
lovingly called by his soldiers "Old stars" the
Drapers, splendid men, as | well know,
one of them my teacher, the other |
my classmate Among inventors, Elias |
Howe, who, through the sewing ma |
chine, did more to alleviate the tolls of woman |
hood than any man that ever lived, and Prof. |
Morse, who gave us magnetic telegraphy; the |
former doing his work with the needle, the lat
ter with the thunderbolt. Among physicians |
and surgeons, Joseph e. Hutchinson and Marion
Sims and Or. Valentine Mott with the follow
ing epitaph which he ordered cut in honor of |
the Christian religion: MY implicit faith and /
hope is in a merciful Redeemer who is the
resurrection and the life. Amen and amen"
This is our American Machpelah as sacred |
TO US as thee Machpslah 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 ask and answer what |
may seem novel question, but it will be
found, before get through, a practical and
useful and tremendous question: What will
resurrection daY do for the cemeteries First |
j remark, il will be their supernal beautifica-
tlon. At certain seasons it is customary in all
lands to strew flowers over the mounds of the
QeparI6u. 1t may nave Dcen suggested DY the
Tact that Christ's tomb was in a garden. And
when say garden, do not mean a garden OF
these iartudes. The late frosts OF spring and
the early frosts of autumn are so near to 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 the children of the conservatories But at
this season and through the most of the year
the Holy Land is all abush with floral opu-
lence. You find all the royal family of flowers
there, some that you supposed indigenous to the
far North. and others indigenous to the tar
South-the daisy and hyacinth. crocus and
anemone, tulip and water lily, geranium and
ranunculus, lnignonette and sweet marioram
In the college at Beyrout you may see Dr.
POSTS collection of about LS0O kinds of Holy
Land flowers; while among 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 II such floral and
botanical beauties are the wild growths of the /
fields, think of what garden must be in Pales-
tinei And in such garden Jesus Christ slept /
after on the soldiers spear, HIS last drop of
blood had coagulated- And then see how ap-
proprlate that all our cemeteries should be
floralized and tree shaded. In June, Green
wood is Brooklvn's garden.
"Well then" you saw 'how can YOU m axe
out that the resurrection day will beautify the
cemeteTies2 VIII it not leave them plowed-
MP ground? On that day there will be an earth
quake, and will not this split the polished Aber-
deen granite, as well as the plain slab that can
afford but the two words. Our Mary or Our
Charleyf" Well will tell you how the res
urrectIon day will beautify the cemeteries. 1t
will be by bringing up the faces that 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 beau