Los Angeles herald., 1906-11-19
TWELVE BAPTIZED
At AUDITORIUM
ROBERT ]. BURDETTE SPEAKS
ON "NEW LIFE"
Pastor Of Temple Baptist Church
Says No Man Can Hate an
Enemy II He Sees
Hin Die

At the morning service Of the Tenn
pie Baptist church the ordinance ot
baptism was administered, there being
twelve candidates. Pastor Robert y.
Burdette oficiated, being assisted in
the service by DR.. w. T.. schliemann.
Four of the young disciples who re-
ceived baptism were members of the
Sunday school class of b. G. Lyon
and two we're members of the ele-
mentary department of the school, un-
der Mrs. Charles A. Barkerville.
Following the baptism, which was
very beautiful and impressive, the
pastor preached on '"The New Life.
taking for his text Romans vi. 4;
Therefore we are buried with him by
baptism into death, that like as
Christ was raised up from the dead by
the glory of the Father, so we also
should walk in newness OF life.
"'Buried with him in baptism-did
you ever attend joyous funeral? All,
man, IL your bitterest enemy died to-
day, and you wanted to keep on hating
him, you would have to stay away
from his funeral. For the dumb lips
would plead with you to forget all the
angry words that had ever famed and
Kissed upon them. The white face,
touched into gentleness by the soft
caress of death, would say to you that
all the frowns that had ever darkened
it, and all the sneers that had ever
marred 1t, had been smoothed away by
the calm of eternity. The muffied sobs
and the whispered words of endear-
ment, lowering above that poor hand
full of dust in the fiower-strewn cas-
ket, would tell you that something
sweet and lovable and loving there
was in the dead mans life which you
had somehow missed. You couldn't
rejoice at your enemy's funeral.
Funeral Never Joyous
You have heard men say, when some
one, hated and despised, had passed
from the busy ways of life to the great
judgment seat, Well. he was a thor
oughly bad, wicked, dangerous man.
I'm glad he's dead But the man who
can say that didn't see him die. And
he didn't help bury him. The human
soul has gone down to the level of the
brutes of prey when ii can rejoice at
the destruction of a life that only the
power of Almighty God can create. A.
funeral 10 never joyous. There is no
laughter in a tragedy. There is pathos
even in the awful death of Judas.
When a Nero dies his hands, red with
his own life, and the world breathes
more freely because her breath is rid
of human fiend, we look back at the
morning time of that ruined life--a
| didly God planned it-how fearfully
man misbuilded 1t!
| IF there be pathos and something
| of tenderness in the burial of your
enemy-what heartache and heart
break at the burial of your friend
man or woman whom you loved. Here
in this dear land of perpetual summer,
we lay our dead away to rest-not
amid the bloom and fragrance that
| typify the resurrection, but amid the
tokens of a deathless life.
| Grave Green Bower
The grave is a bower of greenery,
| of vines and palms of victory. We
never hear the dull falling of the clods
upon the casket that holds the cher
ished dust. We scatter petals of the
ever blooming rose and violet, falling
color. But oh, the very beauty and
sweetness of 1t all starts the tears,
even as the warm kisses of the sun
turn the ice-bound brooks of winter
climes into streams of crystal Beauty
and art, and love and faith and hope,
dear and joyous in themselves, may
come to the burial, but they come as
mourners. They cannot make the
death chamber gladstone. And when
false faith comes into it's silence with
laughter and the songs of the BAN
quet hall, the mirth Is blasphemous
and hideouS
And yet. only little while ago. you
watched burial that made the heart
of every Christian throb with joy,
made the soul thrill under the touch
Of love divine. You saw the robed
candidates walk down into the crys-
tai grave and there you saw them
buried with Christ into his death,
and as the translucent grave closed
above the upturned faces smiles of
more than human joy lighted your
faces and from every Christian soul
went UP a glad prayer of thanksgiv-
ing that these dear disciples were
buried with Christ in baptism, into
his DEATH
"Oh, wondrous paradox of infinite
love, that makes a burial a festival;
that transforms the grave OF dark.
ness into the resplendent dawn of a
new. glad, radiant day of promise and
hope and faith! Buried with Christ!
And he was buried that all the genera
tions of man, forever, might know,
down deep in the faith and certainty
of the soul knowledge. that there was
something in Gods world mightier
than this terrible conqueror we call
death. Something stronger than the
bands of the sealed sepulcher.
"Yes," said Cassidy, IT was born In
1864, an twas a good thing for me I
was"
why so?" asked Casey. AD
''Bekase. man, FEBRUARY 20 is me
birthday. so IL 1864 hadn't been a leap
year, shure, 1 wouldn't have been born
at all"-Philadelphia Press.