The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1890-04-17
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Weekly Discourse OF the Great
Brooklyn Preacher.


,ros u Maehpelah thich lods before Mamre
the field aud The cdre iohieh iGds therein,
aud all the trees that lreFe in the field that
,gere q, al The borders round about, toere
made sure unto .Abrdhdm. Gen xiii,
III 49,
Here is the first cemetery ever laid out.
Machpelah was itsname TWAS an arbores-
cent 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
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 family plot for her last slumber.
Ephron owned this real estate, and
after, in mock sympathy for Abra-
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
were no deeds and no halls ofrecord 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
palahl That Gods acre' dedicated by
Abraham has been the mother OF innumera-
BILE mortuary observances. Tho metropolis
of every civilized land has wed with its me-
tfopolisi
The most beautiful hills of Europe outside
the great cities are covered with obalisk 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 COMMUNICATIONS
For this purpose Pisa has its arcades of mar
BILE sculptured into exquisite has reliefs and
the features of dear faces that have van
ished Genoa has its terraces cut into
tombs, and Constantinople covers with cy-
press the silent habitatons, and Paris hasts
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
on all sides is expended in the work of in
terment, mummfication and incarceration.
Our own country consents to be second to
none in respect to the life,eCs bo1y: Every
city and town and neighborhood of any i'll
telligence or virtue has not many miles
away, its sacred inclosure, whers 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
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,
a1o EnI. ,l,s,lH
erations in peace waiting for other genera
lions to join them No dormitory of breath
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 Abel 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 Gottschalk and the
holy Thomas Hastings. Among the philan-
thropists, Peter Cooper and Isaac T. Hopper
and Lucretia Mott and Isabella Graham,
and Henry Bergh, the apostle Of mercy to
| the brute creation. Among the literati, the
| 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
men, as | well know, one of them my
teacher the other my classmate.
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 with the thunderbolt. Among physi-
clans and surgeons Joseph G. Hutchinson,
nd Ilr VQlpnfina
| with the following epitaph VIII CHI he ordered
| cut in honor of the Christian religion "My
| implicit faith and hope is in mercfnl Re-
| deemer, who is the resurrection and the life.
| Amen and Amenn This is our American
Machpelah as sacred to us as the Mach
pelahin 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, practical
and useful and tremendous question. What
| will Resurrection day do for the cemeteries?
| First, remark it will be their supernatural
| Identification. At certain seasons it is Gus
| tomary in all lands to strew flowers over
the mounds of the departed. 1t may have
been suggested by the fact that Christs
tomb was in garden. And when l say
| garden | do not mean garden of these lati-
tudes. The late frosts of spring and the
| early frosts of autumn are SO near to each
| other that there are only 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 Laud
Is all ablush with floral opulence. You find
all the royal family of flowers there, some
| that you supposed Indigenous to the far north,
| and others indigenous to the far south-the
daisy and hyacintb, crocus and anemone,
tulip and water lily, geranium and ranuncu
lus, mignonette and sweet marjoram.
| In the college at Beyrout you may sec
| DR.. Posts collection of about eighteen hum
dred kinds of Holy Land flowers; while
among the trees are the oak of frozen chimes,
and the tamarisi of the tropics, walnut and
| willow, ivy and hawthorn, ash and elder,
| pine and sycamore. If such floral and Boz
| tanical beauties are the wild growths of the
| fields think of what a garden must be in Pal
estinel And in such garden Jesus Christ
slept after, on the soldiers spear. His last
drop of blood had coagulated And then see
how appropriate that all our cemeteries
| should be floralized 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 the plain slab that can afford but the two
words, Our Mary or Our Charley?
Well, 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 reappearance of those
from whom we have been parted?. l do not
| care which way the tree falls in the blast of
the Judgment hurricane, or if the plowshare
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 l hear the monograph unroll
some voice that talked into it or sung into il
year ago, Just before our friends decea So.
You turn the wire, and then come forth tn,
very tones the very accentuation, the very
cough, the very song of the person thai
breathed into it once but is now departed. II
man can do that, cannot Almighty God
without half trying, return the voice of your
departed2 And if he can return the voice
| why not the lips and the tongue and the