Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1902-04-04

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 a governors or
presidents levee. We stop at such
cloakroom and leave in charge of
servant our overcoat, our oyershoes,
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-
ception of monarchs, and at the door of
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 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 1ocOmotion. We want
them put through a chemistry of soil
and heat and cold and changing sea-
sons, out of which 6 cd will rec construct
them as much better than they are now
as the body of the rosiest and healthi-
est child that bounds over the lawn in
Central park is better than the sickest
patient in Bellevue hospital. But
as to our soul we will cross right
over, not waiting for obsequies, indie
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 glorified with
all the splendors that the infinite God
in all the ages has been able to invent.
Victoryi
This view, of course, makes it of but
little Importance whether we are Gre
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,
cremated at Oxford; Pothinus and
Blandina, a slave, and Alexander, a
physician, and their comrades ere
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-
natural disintegration or cremation
we shall get that luminous, buoyant,
gladstone, transcendent, magnificent,
inexplicab1e structure called the res
direction body. You will have it; I
will have it.
say to you to-day, as Paul said to
Agrippa: "Why should it be thought
thing incredible with you that God
e.
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 a lake, still other drops
from a 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 the
material out of which bone, muscle and
flesh are made, set them up again if
they have fallen? If a manufacturer
of telescopes drops telescope on the
floor and it breaks, can he not mend it
again so you can see through it? And
if God drops the human eye into the
dust, the eye which he originally fash
toned, can he not restore it? Aye, if
the manufacturer of the telescope, by
the use of a new glass and change of
material, can make better instrument
than that which was originally con-
structed and actually improve it, do
you not think the fashioner of the hui
man eye may improve it's sight and
multiply the natural eye by the thou
sandfold additional forces of the res
direction eye?