Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1893-06-30


But mid the gasp and struggle
Wlth shudderins lips she crleo'
Another oh, dearest mother,
Bury me by your side
Only wish she uttered
AS life was ebbing fast:
"sleep by my side. dear mother,
And rise with me at last
Oh yes, we want to be buried together.
Sweet antelope of everlasting residence in
each others companlonship.
When the wrecker went down into the
cabin of the lost steamer, he found the
mother and child in each others arms. II
was sad, but it was beautiful, and it was ap-
propriate. Together they went down To-
gether they will rise. One on earth One
in heaven. Is there not something cheering
In al this thought and something to impress
upon us the idea that the departed are ours
yet-ours forever?
But I console you again with the fact OF
your present acquaintanceship and com
munication with your departed friends. ]
have no sympathy. need not saw. with the
IDEAS Of modern spiritualism. bet what
mean is the theory set forth by the apostle
when he says, ave are surrounded by a
great cloud of witnesses" Just as in the
ancient amphitheatre there were so. 00G
OF 100. 600 people looking down from the gal
leries upon the combatants in the center. so.
says Paul, there is great host of your
friends in all the galleries of the sky looking
down upon our earthly struggles. 1t is a
sweet, a consoling. a scriptural idea. With
slant communication.
Does not the Bible say. care they not sent
forth as ministering spirits to those who
shall be heirs Of salvationY' And when
ministering spirits come down and see US, do
they not take some message back? It is i'm
possible to realize, I know. the idea that
there is such rapid and perpetual lntercom-
munication of earth and heaven. but it is a
glorious reality. You take rail train, and
the train is in full motion, and another train
Il
50 swiftly that you are startled. All the way
between here and heaven is filled with the
up trains and the down trains-spirits com
ing-spirits going-cOming- going-coming
going.
That friend of yours who died last month
do you not suppose he told all the family
news about you in the good land to the
friends who are gone? Do you not suppose
that when there are hundreds of opportuni
ties every day for them in heaven to hear
from you that they ask about you-that they
know your tears, your temptations, your
struggles, your victories? Aye, they do.
Perhaps during the last war you had a boy
in the army, and you got a pass. and you
went through the lines, and you found him,
and the regiment coming from your neigbOr-
hood and you knew most of the boys there.
One day you started for home. You said !:
''Well, now, have you any letters to send?
Any messages to sendT" And they filled
your pockets with letters, and you started for
home. Arriving home, the neighbOr5 came
in. and one said, ''Did you see my John?"
and others, "Did you see George?" ''Do
you know anything about my Frank?" And
then you brought out the letters and gave
them the messages Of which you had been
the bearer. Do you suppose that angels Of
God, coming down to this awful battlefield
of sin and sorrow and death and meeting US
and seeing us and finding out all about US,
carry back no message to the skies?
{hnrn ic in VNT in
present communication with that land. They
are in sympathy with you now more than
they ever were, and they are waiting for the
moment when the hammer stroke shall shatter
the last chain of your earthly bondage, and
your soul shall spring upward. and they will
stand on the heights of heaven and see you
come and when you are within hailing dis
tance your other friends will be called out,
and as you flash through the pearl hung gate
their shout will make the hills tremble,
Hail ransomed spirit, to the city of the
blessedr'
console you still further with the idea Of
resurrection, I know there are a great
many people who do not accept this because
they cannot understand it but, my friends,
there are two stout passages-I could bring a
hundred, but two swarthy passages are
enough-and one David will strike down the
largest Goliah. Marvel not at this, for the
hour Is coming when all who are in their
graves shall come forth" The other swarthy
passage is this 1.-THE Lord shall descend
from heaven with shout and the voice Of
the archangel, and the trump of God, and
the dead in Christ shall rise first" Oh, there
will be such thing as resurrection.
You ask me a great many questions I can
not answer about this resurrection. You
say, for instance, ''If a mans body is con-
stantly changing, and every seventh year he
has an entirely new body and he lives on to
seventy years of age and so has had ten diff
ferent bodies and at the hour of his death
there is not particle of flesh on him that
was there in the days Of his childhood, in the
resurrection which of the ten bodies will
come up or will they all rise?'
You say, suppose man dies, and his body
is scattered in the dust and out of that dust
vegetables grow, and men eat the vegeta-
bles, and cannibals STAY these men and eat
them, and cannibals fight with cannibals I'M
til at last there shall be a hundred men who
shall have within them some particles that
started from the dead body first named
coming up through the vegetable, through
the fret man who ate it and through the can
n1bals who afterward ate him, and there be
more than hundred men who have rights
in the particles of that body-in the resur-
rection how can they be assorted when these
particles belong to them ALP
You say, '"There is missionary buried in
Greenwood, and when he was in China he
had his arm amputated-in the resurrection
will that fragment of the body fly 16, 900 miles
to join the rest Of the body?"
You say, "Will it not be a very difficult
thing for a spirit coming back in that day to
find the myriad particles of its own body
when they have been scattered by the winds
or Oyerlaid by whole generations of the dead
looking for the myriad particles of its own
body, while there are a thousand million
other spirits doing the same thing and all