Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1893-06-30
place build my body, after it is torn down
can He not build il again!

place build my body, after 1t Is torn down
can He not build it again!
'.Oh." YOU say. II would believe that il you
would explain it. lam not disposed to be
skeptical, but explain how it can be done"
My brother, you believe great many things
you cannot explain You believe Your mind
acts on your body. Explain the process. This
seed planted comes up blue flower Another
seed planted comes up yellow flower. An
other seed planted comes up white flower.
Why? Why that wart on your finger? Tell
me why some COWS have horns and other
cows have no horns. Why, when two obsta-
Giles strike each other in the air. do you hear
the percussion? What Is the subtle energy
that dissoIves solid in crucible? What
makes the notches on an oak leaf different
from any other kind of leaf? What makes
the orange blossom different from that ofthe
rose? How can the almightiness which rides
on the circle of the heaven find room to turn
its chariot on a heliotrope? Explain these.
Can you not do it? Then l will not explain
the resurrection. You explain one-haif of
the common mysteries of everyday life, and
l will explain all the mysteries Of the resur-
rectiOn. Yen cannot answer me very plain
questions in regard to ordinary affairs. I am
not ashamed to say that cannot explain God
and the judgment, and the resurrection. [
simply accept them as facts, tremendous and
infinite.
Before the resurrection takes place everv-
thing will be silent. The mausoleums and
the cemetery silent. save from the ciasning
of hoofs and the grinding of wheels as the
last funeral procession comes in. No breath
of air disturbing the dust where Persepolis
stood and Thebes and Babylon. No winking
of the eyelids long closed in darkness. No STIR
ring ofthe feet that once bounded the hillside.
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
foil frnD 70
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-barred sepUlcher. All
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.
ems, across the fields, deep down into the
coral palaces Of the ocean depths where
leviathan sports with his fellows-every-
where, layer above layer. height above
height. depth below depth-dead dead
dead Bot in the twinkling Of an eye,
quick as that. as the arcbangers trumpet
comes pealing, rolling, reverberating, 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,
dust, and Ostend and Sebastopol and Aus
terlitz and Gettysburg stalk forth in the
1urid air, and the shipwrecked rise from the
deep, their wet locks looming above the bill
low, and all the land and all the sea become
one moving mass of life-all generations, all
ages with upturhed countenances-some
kindled with rapture and others blancned
with despair but gazing in one direction,
upon one object, and that the throne OF
resurrection.
On that day you will get back your Chrls-
tan dead. There is where the comfort comes
in. They will come up with the same hand,
the same foot and the same entire body, but
with perfect hand, and perfect foot, and
a 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 a great way off, are not in the dis
lance, 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
ove< to the other side of the river, and they
shouted back. It is said that when George
Whitefeld preached in Third street, Phila-
delphia. one evening time his voice was
heard clear across to the New Jersey shore.
When 1 was a 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
binary tones. And as we come to-day and
stand by the river of Jordan that divides
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 narrow stream,
and our voices go, and their voices come.
Hank! Hush! I 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 I
hear, 'We 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"