The free press., 1893-07-06

last funeral PROCESSION comes In. NO breath
of air disturbing the dust where Persepolis
stood and Thebes and Babylon. NO w1nkng
of the eyelids long closed in darkness NO str-
ring ofthe feet that oncebounded the nillside:
No opening of the hand that once plucked
the flower out of the edge of the wild
wood No clutching of swords by the men
who went down when Persia battled and
Rome fell Silence from ocean beach to
mountain cliff and from river to river. The
sea singing the same old tune. The lakes
hushed to sleep in the bosom of the same
great hills. No hand disturbing the
gate of the long-berred sepulcher. ALI
the nations of the dead motionless
in their winding sheets. Up the side
Of the hills. down through the trough
Of the valleys, far out in the cav
erns. across the fields, deep down into the
coral palaces of the ocean depths where
leviathan sports with his fellows-eyery-
where. layer above layer, height above
height, depth below depth-dead! dead
dead But in the twinkling OF an eye. as
quick as that, as the archangels trumpet
comes pealing, rolling, reverberatlng, crash
ing across continents and seas. the earth Will
give one fearful shudder and the door OF the
family vault. without being unlocked,
will burst open. and all the
graves of the dead will begin to
throb and heave like the waves OF the sea,
and the mansoleum OF princes Will 1ail into
dust, and Ostend and Sebastopol and AUS
terlitz and Gettysburg stalk forth in the
Iurid air and the shipwrecked rise from the
deep, their wet locks looming above the b1i-
low and all the land and all the sea become
one moving mass of hfe-all generations, all
ages with upturned countenances-some
kindled with rapture and others bianched
with despair. but gazing in one direction,
upon one object, and that the throne OF
resurrection.
- Jor will not bon hric
tian dead. There is where the comfort comes
in. They will come up with the same hand,
the same foot end the same entire body, but
with a perfect hand, and perfect foot, and
perfect body, corruption, mortality having
become immortality. And, oh, the reunion
Oh. the embrace after so long an absence!
Comfort one another with these words.
While present these thoughts this morn
ing does it not seem that heaven comes very
near to us, as though our friends, whom we
thought great way off, are not IN the dis
tance but close by? You have sometimes
come down to a river at nightfall, and you
have been surprised how easily you could
hear voices across that river. You shouted
over to the other side of the river, and they
shouted back. It is said that when George
Whitefield preached in Third street, Phila-
delphia, one evening time his voice was
heard clear across to the New Jersey shore.
When was little while chaplain in the
army. remember how at eventide we could
easily hear the voices of the pickets across
the Potomac just when they were using or
dnary tones. And IS we come to-day and
stand by the river Of Jordan that divides US
from our friends who are gone it seems to me
we stand on one bank. and they stand on the
other, and it is only a narrow stream,
and our voices so, and their voices come
Hark Hush / hear distinctly what
they say. "These are they who came out of
great tribulation and had their robes washed
and made white in the blood Of the Lamb"
Still the voice comes across the water, and
hear eve hunger no more we thirst no
more neither shall the sun light on us nor
any heat for the Lamb which is in the midst
of the throne, leads US to living fountains of
water, and God wipeth away all tears from
our eyes"