The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1901-09-26
NOBLEST OF THE NOBLE.
The Magnificent Eulogy to the Dead
President Uttered by Judge
Stake Last Thursday
At a Memorial Service Held in ST. Marks
Ev. Lutheran Church in 0akland-A
General Suspension of Business in
Difference to the Dead.

Last Thursday was observed as a
legal holiday. The banks and public
offices and most of the business houses
were closed. In the afternoon
memorial service was held at st.
Marks Ev. Lutheran church.
Judge Edward Stake, of Hagers-
town, who made the principal ad-
dress, spoke as follows:
A reverential respect for our dead
separates man by all the length and
breadth of creation from every other
type of living creature. With the
grief and gloom that so nearly strains
to it's utmost tension, the overlooking
heart, that it seems ready to break
with anguish, there comes assuage-
ment in the far off echoes of the Di-
vine response to the tender and low
ing emotions with which we commit
our loved ones to their final resting
places in the silent cities of the dead.
Most beautifully has this idea been
expressed by the devout and most
reverential of our American poets:
Alas, the man who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress trees.
Who hopeless lays his dead away
Nor hopes to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marble play;
Who has not learned in hours of trial
On rnRnnWn
That life is ever lord Of death
And love can never lose its own.
With what force there comes to us
today in this connection over the
feeting centuries, the hardening
words of Jacob of old, BURY me with
my fathers, in the cave that is in the
field of Machpelah, which is before
Mamre, in the land of Canaan, there
they buried Abraham and Sarah, his
wife; there they buried Isaac and
Rebeckah, his wife, and there l
buried Leah"
The memorial services which we
pay to our dead in mere form or cere-
monial is as old as the records OF the
human race. From the archaeological
evidences which come to our sight
and senses in the upturned earth and
long buried ruins of prehistoric dy-
nasties. the broken columns and dis
placed sculpture from the cradles OF
the hnman race, the melodies OF the
more recent Greeks, or literature of
the Romans, we learn that mortuary
ceremonies accompany every stage OF
human existence and human progress.
But while we have seemingly moved
in direct line from our ancestors as
exhibited in mere externals, the Gull
ture of our Christian civilization car
ries with it a wiser sense and mean
ing in tributes.to which we thus give
expression to our relations, to our
dead. We seek not like our Pagan
forbears, with the smoke of sacrifices
in temples built to NEUROLOGICAL gods,
or sweet smelling incense in panthe-
ons erected to marble deities to ap-
pease the anger or propitiate the
favor of offended rulers of the fates,
but with broken spirits and contrite
hearts we may learn to welcome death
as the messenger of the inscrutable
and unsearchable wisdom of the Great
Ruler of Heaven and earth, who do
eth all things well, and has taught
our faith that the curse that came in
with our first parents has become our
greatest blessing, so that the poor,
blind and crippled beggar who sits by
the wayside accomplishing, becomes
greater than the mightiest conqueror
by conquering the kingdom in his
own heart.
Truly a great man has this day
fallen in Israel, and we are, in com
mon with a universal sentiment
throughout this broad and Heaven
favored land, with its responses from
foreign lands as well, assembled to-
gether to do homage to his greatness,
revere his memory and so far as Ian
guage can give expression to our sor-
rows for this untoward result, give
expression to our bereavement and
the countrys loss. Let not the So
lemnity or the purity of this occasion
be sullied by an ungenerous, selfish
or vindictive thought. Rather let
our hearts be attuned to the more
ennobling office of an endeayor to
reconcile this to our human under
standing distressing dispensation of
Providence, as one that only Divine
wisdom can comprehend.
The dead, to whose remains and
memory the ceremonies of this day
are devoted, was not one with whose
daily routine and social life we came
in contact with. To us he was simply
one who from humble and plain walks
of life had devoted himself to the
public welfare both in the tented