The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1902-05-01

ana balaklaVa ana bIenne1m, at Me-
giddo and Solferino, at Marathon,
where the Athenians drove back the
Med.s; at Poitiers, where Charles
Martel broke the ranks of the Sara
Gems; at Salamis, where Themistocles
in the great sea fight confounded the
Persians, and at the door of the east
ern cavern of chiseled rock, where
Christ came out through a recess and
throttled the king of terrors and put
him back in the niche from which the
celestial Conqueror had just emerged.
Aha! When the jaws of the eastern
mausoleum took down the black giant,
death was swallowed up in victory"
I proclaim the abolition of death.
The old antagonist is driven back
into mythology with all the lore about
Stygian ferry and Charon with oar
and boat. Melrose abbey and Kenil-
worth castle are no more in ruins than
in the sepulcher. We shall have no
more to do with death than we have
with the cloakroom at governors or
presidents levee. We stop at such
cloakroom and leave in charge of a
servant our overcoat, our overshoes,
our outward apparel, that we may not
be impeded in the brilliant round
of the drawing room. Well, my friends,
when we get out of this world we are
going to Kings banquet and to re-
the tomb we leave the cloak of flesh
and the wrappings with which we meet
the storms of this world. At the close
OF an earthly reception, under the
brush and broom of the porter, the
coat or hat may be handed to us better
than when we resigned it, and the cloak
of humanity will finally be returned to
us improved and frightened and puri-
fed and glorifed.
You and l do not want our bodies re-
turned as they are now. We want to
get rid of all their weaknesses and all
their susceptibilities to fatigue and all
their slowness of locomotion. We want
them put through a chemistry of soil
and heat and cold and changing sea-
sons, out of which God will reconstruct
them as much better than they are now
as the body of the rosiest and health
est child that bounds over the lawn in
Central park is better than the sickest
patien5 in Bellevue hospital. But
as to our soul we will cross right
over, not waiting for obsequies, inde-
pendent of obituary, into state in ev-
cry way better, with wider room and
velocities beyond computation, the
dullest of us into companionship with
the very best spirits in their very best
mood, in the very parlor OF the uni
verse, the four walls FURNISHED and
paneled and pictured and glorifed with
all the splendors that the infinite God
in all the ages has been able to invent.
Victory!
This view, of course, makes it of but
little Importance whether we are ere
mated or sepultured. If the latter is
dust to dust, the former is ashes to
ashes. If any prefer incineration let
them have it without cavil or protest.
The world may become so crowded that
cremation may be universally adopted
by law as well as by general consent.
Many of the mightiest and best spir-
its have gone through this process.
Thousands and tens of thousands of
Gods children have been cremated-P.
P. Bliss and wife, the evangelistic
singers cremated by accident at Ashta-
bula bridge; John Rodgers, cremated
by persecution; Latimer and Ridley,
+1I - nx-f~ Do{h
Blandina, slave, and Alexander, a
physician, and their comrades Gre
mated at the order of Marcus Aurelius;
at least hundred thousand of Christ's
disciples cremated, and there can be
no doubt about the resurrection OF
their bodies. If the world lasts as
much longer as it has thus far, there
perhaps may be no room for the acre
age set apart for resting places, but
there is plenty of room yet, and the
race need not pass that bridge of fire
until it comes to it. The most of us pre-
fer the old way. But whether out OF
natural disintegration or cremation
we shall get that luminous, buoyant,
gladstone, transcendent, magnificent,
inexplicable structure called the res
direction body. You will have it; !
will have it.
I say to you to-day, as Paul said to
Agrippa: "Why should it be thought a
thing incredible with you that God
should raise the dead?" That far up
cloud, higher than the hawk flies, high
er than the eagle flies, what is it made
of? Drops of water from river, other
drops from lake, still other drops
from stagnant pool, but now embod.
led in cloud and kindled by the sun
If God can make such lustrous cloud
out of water drops, many of them
soiled and impure and fetched from
miles away, can he not transport the
fragments of human body from
earth and out of them build a radiant
body? Cannot God, who owns all TIL
material out of which bone, muscle ant
flesh are made, set them up again i
they have fallen? If manufacture
of telescopes drops telescope on th'
| floor and it breaks, can he not mend j
| again so you can see through it? Ant
if God drops the human eye into tn
dust, the eye which he originally fash