Connecticut western news., 1890-04-09
THOUGHTS FOR EASTER.
SERMON PREACHED BYDR. TALMAGE
 SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 1890.

Day Will Beautify All tae Cemeteries.
 Tho Dead Will Rise Rested and More
 Beautiful Than Ever Before.
 BROOKLYN, April 6.-The Academy of Music was appropriately decorated today for Easter service, and the reg ular artists of the Brooklyn Taber- nacle were assisted by eminent musi- cal performers The hymn sung be- fore sermon was:
 We praise thee, God for the Son of thy love,
 For Jesus who died and is now gone above
 The subject of Dr. Talmage's sermon was.sMachpelah or. Easter Thoughts. , It was based on the words in Gen. which was in Machpelah, which was 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:
 THE FIRST CEMETERY. i:,
 Here is the first cemetery ever laid out. Machpelah was its name. It was an arborescent beauty, where the wound of death was bandaged with fo- liage. Abraham, a rich man, not be- ing 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 person who at nine ty 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 nego- tiating for family plot for her last slumber. Ephron owned this real es tate, and after, Tn mock sympathy for Abraham, refusing to take anything for it, now sticks on a big price-four hundred shekels of silver. This ceme- tery 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 times. Then in a cavern of limestone rock Abra- ham put Sarah, and, few years after, himself followed, and then Isaac and Rebekah, and then Jacob and Leah. Embowered, picturesque and memorable Machpelah! That Gods acre" dedicated by Abraham has been the mother of innunlerable mortuary observances. The metropolis of every civilized land has vied with its metrop- oils.
 The most beautiful hills of Europe outside the great cities are covered with obelisk and funeral vase and arched gateways and columns and par terres in honor of the inhumated. The Appian Way of Rome was bordered by sepulchral commemorations. For this purpose Pisa has its arcades of marble sculptured into exquisites bas reliefs and the features of dear faces that have vanished. Genoa has its terraces cut into tombs; and Constan tinople covers with cypress the silent habitations; and Paris has its Pere-La- chaise, on whose height rests Balzac and David and Marshal Ney and Gu vier and La Place and Moliere, and mighty group of warriors and poets and painters and musicians. In all l foreign nations utmost genius on all sides is expended in the work of inter- ment, mummifcation and incinera- ton. AMERICAS HANDSOME CEMETERIES. Our own country consents to be sec- ond to none in respect to the lifeless body. Every city and town and neigh borhood of any intelligence or virtue has, not many miles away, its sacred inclosure, where affection has engaged sculptor's chisel and florists spade and artihcer in metals. Our own city has shown it's religion as we'll as it's art, in the manner in which 1t holds the mem ory of those who have passed forever away, by its Cypress Hills and its Ever greens and its Calvary and Holy Cross and Friends cemeteries. All the world knows of our Greenwood, with now about two hundred and fifty thousand 1 inhabitants sleeping among hills that overlook the sea, and by lakes embo- somed in. an Eden of flowers, our American Westminster Abbey, an Acropolis of mortuary architecture, a Pantheon of mighty ones ascended, elegies in stone, Iliads in marble, whole generations in peace waiting for other generations to join them. No dormi tory of breathless sleepers in all the world has so many mighty dead.
 Among preachers of the gospel, | Bethune and Thomas De Witt, and Bishop James and Tyng, and Abeel l the missionary, and Beecher and Bud dington and MsClintock and Inskip and Bangs and Chapin and Noah Schenck and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among musicians, the renowned Gottschalk and the holy Thomas Hast ings. Among the philanthropists, Pe- ter Cooper and Isaac T. Hopper and Lucretia Mott and Isabella Graham, and Henry Bergh, the apostle of mercy l to- the brute creation. Among the literati. the Carys, Alice and Phoebe, James K. Paulding and John G. Sake. Among journalists, Bennett and Ray
 mond and Greeley Among scientists, 1 Ormsby Mitchell, warrior as we'll as astronomer, and lovingly called by his soldiers "Old Stars"; the Drapers, splendid men, as I we'll know, one of them my teacher, the other my class mate.
 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 mag netic telegraphy; the former doing his
 work with the needle, the latter with the thunderbolt. Among physicians and surgeons, Joseph c. Hutchinson, and Marion Sims, and Dr. Valentine
 Mott, with the following epitaph which
 he ordered cut in honor of the Chris tian religion: My implicit faith and hope is in a merciful Redeemer, who is tke resurrection and the life. Amen and Amen" This is our American
 Machpelah, 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