Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-04-07
Discourse Of DR.. Talmage Yester-
day in the City of Brooklyn.
An Easter Seryice-He Asks and An
swers Novel Question, Though
Practical and Tremendous.
he GIowingIy Pictures the Final Departure
of the accepted Ones for the Great
JerusaIem-The Sermon in Full.
Special TO the Gazette.

decorated to-day for Easter service, and
the regular artists of the Brooklyn tab
ernacIe were ass .stsd by eminent musical
performers. The hymn sung before SER
mon 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
VS. "Maohpelab: or Easter Thoughts. 5"
It was based ID the words in Gen.
xiii, II, Is; "And the field of
Ephron, which was in Machpelah
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 SER
mon in full:
Here is the first cemetery ever laid
out. Machpelah was its name. 1t was
an arborescent 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 his raw
ages. he had no doubt previously no.
ticed this region, and now that Sarah,
his wife, had died-that remarkable per-
son who at ninety years of age had born
10 her the son Isaac, and who now, after
she had reached one hundred and
twenty-seven years, had expired-Abra-
ham is negotiating for a family plot for
her last slumber. EphTon owned this real
estate, and after, in mock sympathy for
Abraham, refusing to take anything for
it, now sticks on a big price-400 shekels
of silver. This cemetery 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 cavern of
limestone rock Abraham put Sarah and,
a few years after, himself followed, and
then Isaac and Rebekah, and then Jacob
and Leah. Embowered, picturesque aud
memorable MaehpelahI That "God s.
acre. dedicated by Abraham has been
the mother of innumerable mortuary OBJ
servances. The metropolis 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 aTched gateways and
columns and parterres in honor of the in
humated. The Appian way of Rome was
bordered by sepulchral concentrations
For this purpose Pisa has its arcades of
marble sculptured into exquisite bas-
reliefs, and the features of dear faces
that have vanished. Genoa has its ter
races cut into tombs; and COnstantinople
covers with cypress the silent hsbita-
tions; and Paris has its Pere-la-C haise,
on whose heights rest Balzac and David
and Marshal Ney aud Cuvier and La
Place and Moliere, and a mighty group
Of warriors and poets and painters and
musicians. In all foreign nations utmost
genius on all sides is expended in the
work Of interment, mummif1cation aud
incinerRtion.
Our own country consents to be second
TO none in respect to the lifeless body.
Every city and town and nsighborhood of
any Intelligence or virtue has, not many
miles away its sacred enclosure, where
affection has engaged sculptor's chiseI
and florist s 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 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 Westminster
Abbey, an Acropolis of mortuary archi-
lecture, q Pantheon of mighty ones as
oended, elegies IN stone, Ilisds in mar
BILE, whole generations in peace waiting
for nfhaT n Thorn No
dormitorY of bTeathless sleepers in all
the world has so many mighty dead.
Among preachers of the gospel, Bethuue
and Thomas Dewitt, and Bishop James
and Tying, and Abeei the missionary, and
Beecher and Buddington and McClintock
and Inskip and Bangs and Chaplin and
Noah Schenck and Samuel Hanson Cox.
Among musicians, the renowned Colts
chalk and the holy Thomas Hastings
Among philanthropists, Peter Cooper and
Isaac T. Hopper and Lucretia Mott and
Isabella Graham, aud Henry Bergh, the
apostle of mercy TO the brute creation.
Among the literati, the Careys, Alice
and Phoebe, James K. Paulding and John
@. SAKE. Among journalists, Bennett
and Raymond and Greeley. Among
scientists, Ormsby Mitchell, warrior as
well as astronomer, and lovingly called
by his soldiers ''Old Stars; the ORA
pers, splendid men, as l well 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 Pro-
fessor Morse, who gave us magnetic
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 Christian re-
iigiOn: my implicit faith and hope is
In a merciful Redeemer, who is the
resurrection and the life. Amen and
amen - This is our American Machpe-
ian, as sacred 10 US as the Machpelah IN
Canaan, of which Jacob uttered that
pastoral poem in one verse: There
they buried Abraham, aud Sarah,
his wife; there they buried Isaac, and
Rebekah, his wife, and there buried
Leah. -
At this Easter service 1 ask and an