Connecticut western news., 1902-04-03

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 locomotion. We want them put through a chemistry of soil and heat and cold and changing seasons, out of which God will recon struct them as much better than they are now as the body of the rosiest and healthiest 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, 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 glorified with all the splendors that the infinite God in all the ages has been able to invent. Victory!
 The Urn or the Tomb.
 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 1t 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 spirits have gone through this process. Thou sands and tens of thousands of Gods children have been cremated-P. F. Bliss and wife, the evangelistic singers. cremated by accident at Ashtabula bridge; John Rodgers, cremated by persecution; Latimer and Ridley, ere mated at Oxford; Pothinus and Blan- dina, a slave, and Alexander, a physi- clan, and their comrades cremated at the order of Marcus Aurelius; at least a hundred thousand of Christ's disci- ples cremated, and there can be no doubt about the resurrection of their bodies. If the world lasts as much lon- ger as 1t has thus far, there perhaps may be no room for the large acreage 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 prefer the old way. But whether out of natural disintegration or cremation we shall get that luminous, buoyant, gladsome, transcendent, magnificent, inexplicable structure called the resurrection body. You will have it; will have it.
 say to you today, as Paul said to Agrippa, "Why should 1t be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the deadP' That far up cloud, higher than the hawk flies, high CT than the eagle flies, what is 1t made of? Drops of water from a river, other drops from a lake, still other drops from a stagnant pool, but now embod- jed in a cloud and kindled by the sun. If God can make such lustrous cloud out of water drops, many of them soil ed and impure and fetched from miles away, can he not transport the frag- ments of a human body from the earth and out of them build a radiant body? Cannot God, who owns all the material out of which bones, muscle and flesh are made, set them up again if they have fallen2 If manufacturer of telescopes drops a 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 fashioned, can he not restore 1t? Aye, if the manu- facturer of the telescope. by the use of a new glass and a change of material, can make better instrument than that which was originally constructed and actually improve it, do you not think the fashioner of the human eye may improve It's sight and multiply the nat ural eye by the thousandfold additional forces of the resurrection eye?
 Everyday Resurrections.
 'Why should it be thought with you an incredible thing that God should raise the deadp' Things all around us suggest it. Out of what grew all these flowers? Out of the mold and the earth. Resurrected! Resurrected! The radiant butterfy-where did 1t come from? The loathsome caterpillar. That albatross that smites the tempest with ll6 WluS6-WhCEc ulu II SOluc IIOug A senseless shell. Near Bergerac, France, in a Celtic tomb under a block, were found flower seeds that had been bur jed 2,0O0 years. The explorer took the flower seed and planted 1t, and it came up. It bloomed in bluebell and helio- trope- Two thousand years ago bur fed, yet resurrected! A traveller says he found in a mummy pit in Egypt garden peas that had been buried there 5000 years ago. He brought them out, and on the 4th of June, 1S44, he plant ed them, and in thirty days they sprang up. Buried 5000 years, yet resurrect- ed! Why should 1t be thought thing incredible with you that God should raise the deadP
 Where did all this silk come from the silk that adorns your persons and your homes? In the hollow of a staff of Greek missionary brought from Chi ma to Europe the progenitors of those worms that now supply the silk mar kets of many nations. The pageantry of hammered host and the luxurious articles of commercial emporium blaz- ing out from the silkworms And who shall be surprised if out of this insig- .-ificant earthly body, this insignificant earthly life, our bodies unfold into something worthy of the coming eter- nities? Put silver into diluted hitter, and 1t dtssolves. Is the silver gone forever? No. Put in some pieces of copper, and the silver reappears. If one force dissolyes, another force or gani8es.
 Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" The insects flew and the worms crawled last autumn fee bier and feebler and then stopped. They have taken no food. They want none. They lie dormant and tnsensi- ble, but soon the south wind will blow the resurrection trumpet, and the air and the earth will be full of them. Do you not think that God can do as much for our bodies as he does for the wasps and the spiders and the snails? This