The Iola register., 1902-04-04

l 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 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-
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 locomotion. We want
them put through 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 healthi-
| est child that bounds over the lawn in
! Central park is better than the sickest
| patien. 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!
This view, of course, makes it of but
|
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 he 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 Cnc
Blandina, a slave. and Alexander, Il
physician, and their comrades ere
mated at the order of Marcus Aurelius;
at least hundred thousand of Christi
disciples cremated. and there can be
no doubt about the resurrection ot
their bodies. If the world lasts Al
much longer as il has thus far, there
perhaps may be no room for the acre
age set apart for resting places, bu
there is plenty of room yet, and thu
race need not pass that bridge of fir'
until it comes to il. The most of us pre-
fer the old way. But whether out o
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.
! say to you to-day, as Paul said t.
Agrippa: "Why should il he thought
thing incredible with you that Go,
should raise the dcad?" That far n
cloud, higher than the hawk flies, high
er than the eagle flies. what is il mad
Of? Drops Of water from river. othe
drops from a lake, still other drop
from a stagnant pool, but now embod
led in a cloud and llindled by the sur
If God can make such lustrous clou
out of water drops, many of ther
soiled and impure and fetched fror
miles away, can he not transport tn
fragments of a human body fror
earth and out of them build a radian
. body? Cannot God, who owns all tn
material out of which bone, muscle an
flesh are made, set them up again
, they have fallen? If a manufacture
, of telescopes drops telescope on tn
T floor and it breaks, can he not mend
= again so you can see through it? An
if God drops the human eye into tn
{ dust, the eye which he originally fash
, ioned, can he not restore it? Aye,
| the manufactures of the telescope, b
, the use of new glass and a change q
material, can make better instrumen
= than that which was originally cor
I structed and actually improve it, d
= you not think the fashioner of the IN
man eye may improve its sight an
I multiply the natural eye by the tho,
: sandfold additional forces of the re'
} direction eye?
t "Why should it be thought with yo
! an incredible thing that God shoul
/ raise the dead?" Things all around Il