The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1901-04-18

earth, and they will cry: "Give us back
our bodies. We gave them to you in
corruption. Surrender them now in in
corruption" Hundreds of spirits hover
there the bodies are buried. A hundred
thousand spirits coming to Greenwood,
for there the bodies are buried. waiting
for the reunion of body and soul.
All along the sea route from New York
to Liverpool, at every few miles where a
steamer went down, departed spirits com
ing hack, lowering over the wave. There
is where the City of Boston persisted.
Found at last. There is where the
President persisted. Steamer found at
last. There is where the Central Amer
lean, went down. Spirits hovering-hun-
dreds of spirits lowering, waiting for
the reunion of body and soul Out on
prairie a spirit aliahts. There is where
q traveller died in the snow. Crash goes
Westminster Abbey, and the poets and
the orators come forth! Wonderful min
Cling Of good and bad. Crash go the
pyramids of Egypt, and the monarchs
come forth.
Who can sketch the scene? I suppose
that one moment before that general ris-
ing there will be an entire silence, save
as you hear the grinding of a wheel or
the clatter of the hoofs of a procession
passing into the cemetery. Silence in all
the caves of the earth. Silence on the
side of the mountain Silence down in the
valleys and far out into the sea. Silence.
But in a moment, in the Hwinklinz of an
eye: as the archangePs trumpet comes
pealing, rolling, crashing across the noun
tain and sea, the earth will give one
terrific shudder, and the graves of the
dead will heave like the waves of the
sea, and Ostend and Sevastopol and Cha
Ions will stalk forth in the lurid air, and
the drowned will come up and wiring out
their wet locks above the billow, and all
the land and all the sea become one NOV
ing mass of life-all faces, all ages, all
conditions gazing in one direction and
upon one throne, the throne of resurrec
ton. 'All who are in their graves shall
come forth"
"But," You saw, eff this doctrine of
the resurrection is true, as prefgured by
this Easter morning, can you tell lis
something about the resurrected bodv"'
/ can. There are mysteries about that
but I shall tell you three or four things
in regard to the resurrected body that
are beyond guessing and beyond mis-
take
In the first place. I remark in regard
to vour resurrected body, it will be a
glorious body. The body we have now
is a mere skeleton of what it would
have been if sin had not married and de-
that was ever made bv an artist and
chip it here and chin it there with chisel
and batter and bruise it here and there
and then stand it out in the storms Of a
hundred wears. and the beauty would be
gone. Well. the human body has been
Clipped and battered and bruised and
damaged with the storms of thousands
Of years, the physical defects of other
generations coming down from genera
70 ,ol Il,o ,,fo
licities of past generations.
But in the morning of the resurrection
the body will he adorned and beautifed
according to the original model. And
there is no such difference between gym
mast and an emaciated wretch in a lazaret-
to as there will be a difference between
our bodies as they are now and our resur-
rected forms. There you will see the per.
feet eve after the waters of death have
washed out the stains of tears and study;
there you will see the perfect hand after
the knots Of toll have been united from
the knuckles; there you will see the
form erect and elastic after the burdens
have gone off the shoulder-the very life
Of God in the body. In this world the
most expressive thing is the human face
but that face is yelled with the griefs Of
tion morn that veil will be taken away
from the face, and the MONDAY sun is
dull and dim and stupid compared with
the outfaming glories of the counter
ances of the saved. When those faces OF
the righteous, those resurrected faces. turn
toward the gate or look up toward the
throne, it will be like the dawning of a
new morning on the bosom of everlasting
dav! O glorious, resurrected body
But I remark also in regard to that
body which YOU are to get in the resur-
rection, it will be an immortal body. These
bodies are wasting away. Somebody has
said that as soon as we begin to live we
begin to die. Unless we keep putting the
fuel into the furnace the furnace dies out.
The blood vessels are canals taking the
breadstuffs to all parts of the system. We
must be reconstructed hour by hour. day
by day. Sickness and death are all the
time trying to get their pry under the
tenement or to push us off the embank-
ment of the grave, but, blessed be God,
in the resurrection we will get body i'm
mortal
Sometimes in this world we feel we
would like to have such a body as that.
There is so much work to be done for
Christ, there are so many tears to be
wiped away, there are so many burdens to
lift, there is so much to be achieved for
Christ we sometimes wish that from the
first of January to the last of December
we could toll on without stopping to
sleep or to take any recreation or to rest
or even to take food-that we could toll
right on without stopping a moment in
our work of commencing Christ and
heaven to all the people, but we all get
tired. 1t is characteristic of the human
body in this condition; we must get tired.
Is it not a glorious thought that we are
going to have body that will never grow
weary? o glorious resurrection day!
Gladly will fling aside this poor body
of sin and fling it into the tomb if at
Thy bidding l shall have a body that
never wearies. That is a splendid resur-
rection hymn that we have all sung:
So Jesus slept. Gods dying Son
Passed through the grave and blessed
the bed.
Rest here, blest saint, till from His
throne
The morning breaks to pierce the shade.
| heard of a father and son who, among
others, We're shipwrecked at sea. The
father and the son climbed int the rig
ging The father held on, but the son
after awhile lost his hold on the rigging
and was dashed down. The father sup
posed he had gone hopelessly under the
wave The next day the father was
brought ashore from the rigging in an ex-
hausted state and laid on bed in a
fsherman's hut, and after many hours
had passed he came to consciousness and