The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1894-03-31
RESURRECTION DAY.
Dr.. Talmage Asks What Will 1t
Do for the Cemeteries.
a Novel Question Answered-The Supernai
Identification OF the Places OF the
Dead Idea of tho
Resurrection.

On Easter Sunday Rev. 7. Dewitt
Talmage preached to Il large congrega-
ton at Brooklyn on Easter in Green-
wood" the text being taken from Gene
sis xiii. II, is: And the field Of
Ephron, which was in M~achpelah,
cave which was therein, and all the
trees that were in the field, that were
in all the borders roundabout, were
made sure unto Abraham" DR.. Tai
mage said:
Here is the first cemetery ever laid
ont. Machpelah was its name. 1t was
an arborescent beauty, where the
wound of death was bandaged with
foliage. Abraham, "a rich man, not
being able to bride the King of Terrors,
proposes here, as far rs possible, to
cover up the ravages. He had no doubt
previously noticed this region, and now
that Sarah, his wife, had died-that re-
markable person, who, at 30 years of
age, had born to her the son Isaac, and
who now, after she had reached 127
years, had expired-Abraham is
negotiating for a family plot for
her last slumber. Ephron owned
this real estate, and after,
in mock sympathy for Abraham,
refusing to take anything for it, now
sticks on n big price-40o shekels of
silver. The cemetery lot is paid for,
and the transfer made, in the presence
of witnesses in a public place, for there
were no deeds and no halls of record
in those early times. Then in n caver
of limestone rock Abraham put Sarah,
and a few years after himself followed,
and then Isaac and Rebekah, and then
Jacob and Leah. Uncovered, pictur-
esque and memorable Machpelah!
That Goods acre" dedicated by
Abraham has been the mother of in
Vulnerable mortuary o~bservances. The
metropolis of every civilized land has
We'd with its metropolis.
The most beautiful hills of Europe
outside the great cities are covered
with obelisk and funeral vase and
arched gateways and parterres in honor
of the inhumated. The Appian Way
of Rome was bordered by sepulchral
concentrations For this purpose
Pisa has it's arcades of marble sculpt-
aiSN liito JOS hiS III shhS
features of dear faces that have van
ished. Genoa has its terraces cut into
tombs, and Constantinople covers with
cypress the silent habitations, and
Paris has it's Pere la Chaise, on whose
heights rest Balzac and David and
Marshal Ney and Cuvier and La Place
and Moliere, and a mighty group of
warriors and poets and painters n
musicians. In all foreign nations ut
most genius on all sides is expended in
the work of interment, naturalization
and incarceration.
Our own country consents to be Sec
ond to none in respect to the l~ifeless
body. Every city and town and neigh
borhood of any intelligence or virtue
has, not many miles away, its sacred
Enclosure, where affection has engaged
sculptor's chisel and florists spade and
artificer in metals. Our own city has
shown its religion as well as its art, in
the ann which it holds the memory
of those who have passed forever away,
by its Cypress Hills, and its Evergreens,
and its Calvary, and Holy Cross, and
Friends cemeteries. All the world
knows of our Greenwood, with now
about 2I5, 900 inhabitants sleeping
among the hills that overlook the sea,
and by lakes embosomed in an Eden
of flowers, our American Westminster
Abbey, an Acropolis of mortuary arch
itecture, n Pantheon of mighty ones
assembled, elegies in stone, Iliads in
marble, whole generations in peace
waiting for other generations TO- join
them. No dormitory or b~reathless
sleepers in all the world has SO many
mighty dead.
Among the preachers of the gospel,
Bethune and Thomas Dewitt, and
Bishop James and Tying, and Abeel, the
missionary, and Beecher and Budding
ton, and McClintock and Inskip, and
Bangs and Chaplin, and Noah Schenck
and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among
musicians. the renowned Gottschalk
and the holy Thomas Hastings. Among
philanthropists, Peter Cooper and Isaac
Il. Hopper, and Lucretia Mott and lisa
bella Graham, and Henry Bergh, the
apostle of mercy to the brute creation.
Among the literati, the Carys, Alice
and Phoebe; James X. Paulding anG
John G. SAKE. Among journalists, Ben
nett and Raymond and Greeley. Among
scientists, Ormsby Mitchell, warrior n!
we'll as astronomer, and lovingly called
by his soldiers 'Old Stars" Prof. Proc
tor and the Diapers, splendid men, rs
well 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 womanhoot
thar any man that ever lived. and Prof
Morse, who gave us magnetic telegra
ply, the former doing his work with tn
needle, the latter with the thunderbolt
Among physicians and surgeons, JOSEPH
c. Hutchinson and Marion Sims, ant
DR.. Valentine Mott. with the followin,
epitaph which he ordered cut in homo
of Christian religion: my implicit faitl
and hope is in a merciful redeemer, VIII
is the resurrection and the life. Amer
and Amen" This is our American
Machpelah, as sacred to us as the Mach
pelah in Canaan, of which Jacob nj
tered that pastoral poem in n verse
There they buried Abraham an
Sarah, his wife; there they buried Isaa
and Rebekah, his wife, and there
buried Leah"
At this Easter service | ask and ar
swer what may seem a novel question
but it will be found, before / &c
through, a practical and useful an
tremendous question: What will re.
direction day do for the cemeteries
First, / remark, it will be their supel
nal Identification. At certain season
it is customary in all lands to stree
flowers over the mounds of the depar
ed. 1t may have been suggested b
the fact that Christ's tomb was in
garden. And when | say garden ! q
not mean n garden of these latitude
J The late frosts of spring and the ear
frosts of autumn are so near each 9th
that there are only a few months
flowers in the field. All the flowe
} we see to-day had to be petted IL
coaxed and put under shelter, or thu
would not have bloomed at all. TIL,
But at this season and through Il
most of the year, the Holy Land is 9
ablush with floral %opulence.
. You find all the royal family of flo,
~digenous to the far north, and othe
indigenous to the far south-the dai
and hyacinth, crocus and anemone, t
lip and water lilly, %geranium and +
nunculus, mignonette and sweet ms
! joram. In the college at Beyrout y
man coo M DnNt"c cnllnntinu of abn