The Camden journal. [volume] (Camden, S.C.) 1866-1891, 1890-04-24
DR., TALMAGE'S SERMON.
His Subject "Machpelah; or, Easter
,~ Thoughts"
Preached Mt the Academy OF Music,
Rrooklyn, New York.

and all the trees thGt Wefc tH He Jtett, "b'
mere in all the borders round Gbou', mere
made sure unto AbTdhdm. '-Gen. AAlll.,
Il, Is.
Here is the first cemetery ever laid out.
Machpelah was its name. ltwaS an arooreS-
cent beauty, where the wound OF death was
handageci with tohage. Abraham, rich man,
not being able to.bribe the King of IerrorS,
proposes here, as far as possible, to cover up
up his ravayes. He had no doubt previously
noticed this region, and now that Sarah hls
wife had diei-that remarkable person who
ut ninety wears of are had born to her the
son Isaac, and who now, after she had
reached one hundred and twenty-seyen
wears, had expired-Abraham is negotiating
for family plot, for her last slumoer;
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, lE :he pres
ence of witnesses in public place, for there
were no deeds and no balls of record in those
early times. Then in a cavern Of limestone
rock Abraham put Sarah, and a few years
after, himself followed. and then Isaac and
Rebckah, and then Jacob and Leah. En-
lowered, picturesque and memorable Mach
palah. That "Gois acre. dedicated by
Abraham has been the mother Of innumera-
BILE mortuary observanceS. The metropolis
of every civilized land has vie1 with its me-
tropoliS.
The most beautiful hills of Europe outside
the great cities are covered with o5eliSS AMI
funeral vase and archei gateways and cc!-
umns and parterreS in honor OF the lnau-
mated The Appian Way OF Rome was
bordered by sepucAral cornmemoratlons.
For this purpose Pisa has its arcades o: mar
III intn
the features Of dear faces that have van
ished. Genoa has its terraces cut INTO
tombs; and Constautinople covers with cy-
press the silent habitationS: and Paris haSltS
Pere-L 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 ali sides is expended III the work OF III
terment, naturalization and incineraton.
Our own country consents to be second TO
none in respect to the lifeleSS body. Every
CITY and town and neighborhood of any in
tellicence or virtue has, not many miles
away, its sacred Enclosure, where affection
has engaged sculptorS chlSel and florists
spade and artificer in metals. Our own city
has shown its religion as we'll as its art, in
the manner in which it holds the memory or
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 embosome1 In an
Eden OF flowers our American Westminster
Abbey, an AcropoliS of mortuary architec-
ture, Pantheon of mighty ones assembled,
elegies in stone. Iliads in marble, whole gen
eratons in peace waiting for other genera
tions to Join them. No dormitory OF breath
less s!eepers in all the world has SO many
mighty dead.
Among preachers of the gospel, Berhune
and Thomas De Witt and Bishop James and
Tying, and Abeel the missionary, and
Beecher and Buddington and McClintock
and lnskp and Bangs and Chaplin and Noah
Schenck and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among
musicians, the renowned Gottschalk and the
holy Thomas Hastings. Among the philau-
thropists Peter Cooper and Isaac I. Hopper
and Lucretia Mott and Isabella Graham,
and Henry Bergh, the apostle of mercy to
the brute creation. Among the lteratl, the
Carys, Alice and Phoebe, James K. Paulding
and John G. Sake. Among the journalists,
scientists, Ormsby Mitchell, warrior as well
as astronomer, and lovingly called by his
soldiers ''Old Stars" the Drapers, splendid
men, as / we'll 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 c. Hutchinson,
and Marion Sims, and DR.. Valentine Mott,
with the following epitaph VIII ch he ordered
cut in honor of the Christian religion: MY
implicit faith and hope is in mercifnl Re-
deemer, who is the resurrection aud the lie.
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 RebeSah his vile, ana
there ouTied Leah"
At this Easter service I 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
beau ication. At certain seasons 1T 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 q garden. And when l say
tudes. 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
Conservatives But at this season and
through the most of the year, the Holy Land
is all ablush with floral opulence. You find
all the roral family of flowers there, some
that yor supposed indigenous to the far north,
and others indigenous to the far south--the
daisy and hyacinth, crocus and anenone,
tulip and water lily, geranium and ranuncu
luS, miguonette and sweet marjoram.
In the college at Beyrout you may see
DR.. Posts collection of about eighteen hum
dred kinds of Holy Land flowers; while
among the 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. If such floral and bo-
tanical beauties are the wild growths of the
fields think of what garden must be in Pa
estine. And in such a garden Jesus Christ
slept after, on th1 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? Will it not leave
them a plowed up ground? On that day
there will be an earthquake, and will not this
split the polished Aberdeen granite, as we'll
as the plain slab that can afford but the two
words, Our Mary or Our CharleyY"
Well, l 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? do not
care which wav the tree falls in the blast of
the Judgment hurricane, or if the plowshare