Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1890-04-07
A SEAS0NABLE SERMON.
THE SUBJECT: MAcHPeLAH; OR, EAs-
TER THOUGHTS.

GFShCHeu ny NV II ~ WIZ AaAmakSt ~
d., Sunday, April 6-The Full Text
Here Reported-The Resurrection Idea
Most Blessed Thought TO All Christians.
BROOKLYN, April 6 The Academy of Music
was appropriately decorated today for Eas-
ter service, and the regular artists of the
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 aud 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, H. IS: And
the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah,
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;
MACHPELAH.
Here is the first cemetery ever laid out.
Machpelah was It's name. It was an arbor-
escent beauty, where the wound of death was
bandaged with foliage. Abraham, rich
man, not being able to bride the King of
Terrors proposes here, as far as possible, to
cover up his ravages He had no doubt pre-
Fluusly uObiCth thlo IcSlOlt hllA NV phdb
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 twentv-seven
years, had expired-Abraham is negotiating
for family plot for her last slumber. Eph-
-on owned this real estate and after, i'll mock
sympathy for Abraham, refusing to take
anything for it, now sticks on a big price
four hundred shekels of silver. This Ceme-
terry lot is paid for, and the transfer made, in
the presence Of witnesses in a public place,
for there were no deeds and no halls Of record
in those early times. Then in II cavern Of
limestone rock Abraham put Sarah, and,
few years after himself followed, and then
Isaac and Rebekah, and then Jacob and
Leah. Uncovered, picturesque and memoir
able Machpelah! That Gods acre" dedi-
Gated by Abraham has been the mother Of
innumerable mortuary observances. The me-
cropolis of every civilized land has We'd with
its metropolis.
The most beautiful hills of Europe outside
the great cities are covered with obelisk and
funeral vase and arched gateways and col
umns and parterres in honor Of the inhu-
mated The Appian Way of Rome was
bordered by sepulchral commentators,
For this purpose Pisa has its arcades of mar
BILE sculptured into exquisite bas reliefs and
the features of dear faces that have vanished.
Genoa has its terraces cut into tombs; and
Constantinople covers with cypress the silent
habitations and Paris has its PEREZ achase,
ON whose heights rest Balaac and David and
Marshal Ney aud Cuyier and La Place and
Moliere, and mighty group of warriors and
poets and painters and musicians. In all
foreign nations utmost genius on all sides is
4l,a. ,,r ,1Fni.
Gication and incarceration.
RESTING PLACES OF THE DEAD.
Our own country consents to be second to
none in respect to the lifeless body. Every
city and town and neighborhood of any in
telligence or virtue has, not many miles
away, its sacred Enclosure, where affection
has engaged sculptor's chisel and florists
spade and artiicer 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.
An the world knows of our Greenwood, with
now about two hundred aud fifty thousand
inhabitants sleeping among hills that over
look the sea and 10y lakes embosOmed in
an Eden of flowers our American West
minister Abbey, an Acropolis of mortuary
architecture a Pantheon of mighty ones as
cended, elegies in stone lliads in marble,
whole generations III peace waiting for other
generations to join them. No dormitory OF
breathless sleepers in all the world has 80
many mighty dead
Among preachers of the gospel, Bethune
and Thomas Dewitt, and Bishop James and
Tying, and Abee the missionary, and Beecher
and Buddingtou, and McClintock and lnsliip,
and Bangs and Chaplin, and Noah Schenck
and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among musicians,
the renowned Gottschali and the holy
Thomas Hastings Among phianthropists
Peter Cooper and Isaac T. Hopper, and Lu-
cretia Mott and Isabella Graham, and Henry
Bergh the apostle of mercy to the brute Gre
alton Among the literatl, the Carys, Alice
and Phoebe James X. Paulding and John G.
SAKE Among journalists, Bennett and Ray
mond and Greeley. Among scientists, Orms-
bv Mitchell, warrior rs well as astronomer,
and lovingly called by his soldiers "Old
Stars the Diapers, splendid men, as | well
know. one OF them my teacher, the other my
clnsSmate.
Among inventors Elias Howe, who,
Through the sewing machine, did more 10 al
Ieyiate the tolls of womanhood than any man
that ever lived, and Professor Morse who
gave us magnetic biography, the former
doing his " rk with the needle the latter
with the thundcrbolt Among physicians
and surgeons. Joseph c. Hutchinson, and
Marion Sims, and DR.. Valentine Mott, with
the following eptaph which he ordered cut
In honor of the Christian religion; "My i'm
plicit faith and hope is in a nercltul redeem
or. who is the resurrection and the life. Amen
and amen.n This is our American Machpelah,
as sacred to It's as the Machpelah 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. "
NOVEL QUESTION.
At this Easter service | ask and answer
what may seem IA novel question, but 1t Will
be found, before | get through, a practical
and useful and tremendous question; What
will resurrection day do for the cemeteries
First | remark, il will be their supernal
Identification, At certain seasons II Is GUS
tomary in all lands to strew flowers over the
mounds of the departed. II may have been
suggested by the fact that Christ s tomb was
I'M garden. And when | say garden, dc
not mean a garden of these ATTITUDES Inc
late frosts of spring and the early trosts
of autumn are So near To each other thal
there are only few months of flowers III the
field All the flowers we SEQ today had TO ot
petted and coaXed and put under shelter, OF
they would not have hoomed at all. They
ara the children of the constructors. Bu'
at this season, and through the most OF tht
ve,r the Holy Land is all ablush with fora
opuleuce.
You find all the royal family Of flower
there. some that YOU supposed Indigenous e
the far north, and others indigenous b" the iAi