Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1894-04-06
REV. DR., TALMAGE.
The Eminent Brooklyn Divine's Sun
day Sermon.
subject. "rester ~ Greenwood.' ;,

SUBJECT. LHEteI
Text "And the field of Hebron. ,ohich ua,
IN MachpeIdh, 1ohich ,ods before Monre The
field, and The cdUe 1ohich mas therein, and al
the trees that lcere in the field, that lcere in al
the borders round about, tcere made sure unto
abraham. Genesis xiii, II, 10.
Here is the first cemetery ever laid out.
Machpelah was its name. 1t was an arbo,
resent beauty, where the wound Of death
was bandaged With foliage Abraham. p
rich man, not being able to bride the king OF
terrors, proposes here, as far as possible, I'd
cover up the ravages. He had no doubt
previously noticed this region; and now that
Sarah, his wife, had died-that remarkable
person Who at ninety years of age, had born
70 her the son Isaac, and who now, after she
mad reached 1877 years, had expired-Abra-
ham is negotiating for family plot for her
last slumber.
Ephron owned this real estate, and after,
in mock sympathy for Abraham, refusing to
take anything for it, how sticks on a big
price-@400 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 a cavern of
limestone rock Abraham put Sarah, and
few years after himself followed, and then
Isaac and Rebekah, and then Jacob and
Lelh. Embowered, picturesque and menu
orable Machpelah That Goods acre" dedi-
Gated by Abraham has been the mother of
ihnametable mortuary observances. 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 col
umns and parlerres in honor Of the inhum-
ated. The Appan way of Rome was borA
dered by sepulchral concentrations. For
this purpose Pisl has its arcades Of marble
sculptured into excellent bas-feiefs ali | the
features of dear faces that have vanished.
Genoa has its terraces cut into tombs, and
Cohstantinople covers with cyprus the silent
habitatiODs, and Paris has its Pere Ia Chaise,
on whose heights rest Balzac and David and
Marshal Ney and Cuyier and La Place and
Molierc and mighty group Of warriors and
poets and painters and musicians. In all
foreign nations utmost genius on all sides is
expended in the work Of interment, nirmmi-
fication and inciheration.
Our own country consents to be second to
none III respect to the lifeless body. Every
city and town and neighborhood of an intel
ligence or virtue has not many miles away
its sacred Enclosure, where affection has en-
gagged sculptors chisel and florists SPADE
and artif1cer in metals. Our own city has
shown its religion as we'll as its art in the
manner 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 go, 900 inhabitants sleeping
among the hills that overlook the sea, and
by lakes embosomed in an Eden of flowers,
<,, x>,x... s.s.k
polls of mortuary architecture, at Pantheon
of mighty ones assembled, elegies in stone,
IliRds in marble, whole generations in peace
waiting for other generations to join them.
No dOrmitory of breathless sIeepers in all the
world has so many mighty dead,
Among the preachers of the Gospel, Be-
thune and Thomas De Witt and Bishop James
and Tying and Abeel, the missionary, and
Beecher and Buddington, and McClintock
and Inskip, and Bangs and Chaplin, and
Noah Sohenck and Samuel Hanson Cox.
Among musicians, the renowned Gottschalk
and the holy Thomas Hastings. Among
philanthropists, Peter Cooper and Isaac T.
Hopper, and Lucretia Mott and Isabella
Graham, and Henry Bergh, the apostle of
mercy to the brute creation. Among the
litterati. the Carys-Alice and Phoebe
James X. Pauding and John G. Sake
and Greeley. Among scientists, Ormsby.
Mitchell, warrior as well as astronomer and
lovingly called by his soldiers cold Stars >
Professor Proctor and the Diapers
splendid men, as l we'll know, one of them
my teacher, the other my classmate.
Among inventors Elias Howe, who through
the sewing machine did more 10 alleviate
the tolls of womanhood than any man that
ever lived an / Professor Morse, who gave
us magnetic telegraphy, the former doing
his work with the needle the latter with the
geons Joseph G. Hutchinson and Marion
Sims and DR.. Valentine Mott, with the fol-
lowing epitaph, which he ordered cut in
honor of Christian religion: "My implicit
faith and hope is in Iherciful Redeemer,
who is the resurrection and the life. Amen
and Amen" This is our American Machpe-
lab, as sacred to us as the Machpelah in
Canaan, of which Jacob uttered that pastoral
poem in one verse 'There they buried
Abraham and Sarah, his wife there they
buried Isaac and Rebekah, his wife, and
there buried Leah"
At this Easter service I ask and answer
what may seem o novel question, but it will
be found, before get through, a practical
and useful and tremendous question, What
will resurrection day do for the cemeteries?
Il
At certain seasons it is Gus
tomary in all lands 10 s;rew flowers over the
mounds of the departed. 1t may have been
suggested by the fact that Christ's tomb was
in Il garden. And when l say garden ] do
not mean garden of these latitudes. The
late frosts OF spring and the carry fros;s Of
autumn are SO near each other that there
are only few months OF flowers in the field.
All the flowers we see to-day had to be
petted and coaxed AMI put under shelter, or
hey would not have bloomed at all. Tney
are the children ofthe Conservatives. But
at this season and through the most of the
year the Holy Land is all ablush with floral
Opulence.
You find all the royal family Of flowers
here, some that you suppose indigenous TO
the far north and others indigenous to the
far south-the daisy and hyacinth, crocus
md anemone, tulip and water lily, geranium
md ranunculus, mignonette and sweet mar
oram. In the college at Beirut you may see
Dr.. Posts collection of about 1900 kinds of |
Hoy Land flowers, while among trees are
he oaks of frozen chimes, and the tamarisk |
II the tropics, walnut and willow, ivy and |
hawthorn, ash and elder, pine and sycamore.
II such floral and botanical beauties are the |
Wild growths of the field. think of what |
garden must be in Palestine And in such |
garden Jesus Christ slept alter, on the |
soldiers spears, His last drop of blood had |
And then see how appropriate |
hat all our cemeteries should be toraized |
and tree shaded. In June Greenwood is |
garden.
"Well, then" you say, chow can you
make out that the resurrection day will |
Deautify the cemeteries? Will it not leave |
hem plowed up ground? On that day |
here will be an earthquake, and will not |
his split the polished Aberdeen granite as
we'll as the plain slab that can afford but two
words-'Our Mary or Our Charley?