News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-06-22

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| But mid the gasp and struggle
With shuddering lips she cried,
Mother, oh, dearest mother,
| Bury me by your side"
Only one wish she uttered
! AS life was ebbing fast,
| "Sleep by my side, dear mother,
| And rise with me at last"
CLOUD OF WITNESSES.
Oh, yes, we want to be buried togeth-
er. Sweet antelope of everlasting resi-
dence in each others cOmpanionship.
When the wrecker went down into the
cabin of the lost steamer, he found the
mother and child in each others arms.
1t was sad, but it was beautiful, and it
was appropriate. Together they went
down. Together they will rise. One on
earth. One in heaven. Is there not
something cheering in all this thought
and something to impress upon US the
idea that the departed are ours yet-ours
| forever?
But l console you again with the fact
of your present acquaintanceship and
communication with your departed
friends. have no sympathy, need not
say, with the ideas of modern spiritual
ism, but what l mean is the theory set
forth by the apostle when he says, eve
are surrounded by a great cloud of wit
nesses." Just as in the ancient amphi-
theater there were $4,000 or 100. 1000 peo-
pie looking down from the galleries upon
the combatants in the center, SO, says
Paul, there is a great host of your friends
in all the galleries of the sky looking
down upon our earthly struggles. 1t is
a sweet, consoling, Scriptural idea.
With wing of angel, earth and heaven
are in constant communication.
Does not the Bible say, care they not
sent forth as ministering spirits to those
who shall be heirs of salvatiOn?' And
when ministering spirits come down and
see us, do they not take some message
back? 1t is impossible to realize, l know,
| the idea that there is such rapid and per-
petual ntercommunication of earth and
heaven, but it is glorious reality. You
take rail train, and the train is in full
motion, and another train from the OPP
posite direction dashes past you so
swiftly that you are startled. All the
way between here and heaven is filled
with the up trains and the down II MS
| spirits coming-spirits going coming
-going-coming-
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 hun
dreds of opportunities every day for
| them in heaven to hear from you that
they ask about you-that they know
your tears, your temptations, your strug-
giles, your victories? Aye, they do.
Perhaps during the last war you had
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 neighborhood 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 send?' And they filled your pockets
with letters, and you started home. Ar
irving home, the neighbors came in, and
one said, Ibid 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?
Oh, there is consolation in it! You are
in present communication with that
land. They are in sympathy with you
| now more than they eva 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 distance your other friends will
be called out, and as you flash through
the pearl hung gate their shout will
make the hills tremble, "Haill ransomed
spirit, to the city of the blessedr'
console you still further with the
idea of resurrection. / know there are
a great many people who do not accept
this because they cannot understand it;
but, my friends, there are two stout pas
sages-I could bring a hundred, but two
swarthy passages are enough-and one
David will strike down the largest Go
Hath. 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 a 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 a thing as
resurrection.
You ask me great many questions l
cannot answer about this resurrection.
| You say for instance, eff a mans body
is constantly changing, and every sew
enth year he has an entirely new body,
and he lives on to 70 years of age and
so has had 10 different 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 resurrec-
ton which of the 10 bodies will come
up or will they all riser"
You say, Suppose a man dies, and his
body is scattered in the dust, and out of
that dust vegetables grow, and men eat
the vegetables, and cannibals slay these
men and eat them, and cannibals fight
with cannibals until at last there shall
be hundred men who shall have wifign
them some particles that started fEBn
the dead body first named, coming NJ
through the vegetable, through the first
man who ate it and through the can't
balls who afterward ate him, and there
be more than hundred men who have
rights in the particles of that body-in
the resurrection how can they be assert
ed 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 resur-
rection will that fragment of the body
fly 10000 miles to join the rest of the
body?"
You say, Twill it not be very diff
cult thing for q spirit coming back in
that day to find the myriad particles OF
its own body, when they may have been
scattered by the winds or overlaid by
whole generations of the dead, looking
for the myriad particles of it's own body
while there are thousand million other
spirits doing the same thing, and all the
assortment to be made within one day?
You say, ''If $50 men go into place
of evening entertainment and leave
their hats and overcoats III the hall,
when they come back it is almost impos-
sible for them to get the right ones, or to
get them without a great deal of per
| plexity, and yet you tell me that myr-
lads of spirits in the last day will come
and find myriads of bodies
Have you any more questions to ask
Any more difficulties to suggest? Any
more mysteries? Bring them onl Against
a whole regiment of skepticism l will