The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-04-15

two angels. three angels, hundred an l gels-aye thousand angels-about the
 tomb of the risen Lord. Because the dis l iples did not see them all does not prove | they were not there. In other Wofds
 want you to grasp this great truth: As | the angels of heaven came to the manager. to sing Christ q farewell song. so, at the open door of the tomb, l want you to
 see the angels coming to sing to the risen
 Lord q glorious Easter song of triumph. Angels! Angels Angels at the birth of Jesus-angels at his resurrection.
 Now. as the angels had such a large part to do with the earthly life of our Lord
 Jesus Christ the question which comes 10 our mind is this: Who are these angels? If they were important to Christs life, are they important to ours? Angels are mentioned at least 2SO dif- ferent times in the Bible. They were inn
 portant to the lives Of Abraham and Isaac
 and Jacob and Moses and Joshua and
 David and all the other mighty servants of God in the Old and the New Testa-
 ment, and they are important to our life as they were to Christ,s. When We shall arise from zour graves God will send his angels to greet us as he sent hls angels to greet Christ. Wesmay be par doned for wondering if the heavenly mes sengers who shall stand by our open
 
 gone beyond and have came back to
 earth to take us to our celestial home. We wonder if the messenger who will i open our closed eyelds on our first East
 CT morn shall be mother or father or brother or little child. Lord Jesus, who art thou going to send us at this time?
 Will it be one of our loved ones who is
 to be thy messenger?
 Who Are the Angels? If you have stood by many deathbeds you know that when the Christian is
 dying. if he is of clear mind, he is very apt to see his dear ones beyond and to re- cc gnize them and even to call them by
 name. When I was young pastor in
 Pittsburg one of the dearest girls of my church fell sick unto death with consump
 ton. She grew weaker and weaker, but
 her mind was perfectly clear A short time before she died Jennie looked up and
 said, Mother there are grandma and auntie, an dthey are coming for me-" The
 mother thought her daughter was in de- lirium and bent over the side of the bed and said, Jennie, Jennie do you know me2" Why of course 1 know you mother. am not out of my mind. Do you not see them2 Grandma and auntie are coming
 for me Don't you see them? And they are singing now. Cannot you hear them
 singing? And. oh, the music is so sweet .
 Have not you had such experiences in your family life2s
 When the great Henry Clay was about to die he looked up and suddenly his face was radiant with @ smile he call
 ed: Mother Mother! Mother!' Who
 will say that his mother did not come as God's 2 messenger to meet him at the
 grave? Remember, an angel in the Scrip tural sense, is a messenger of God. Christ had his angels at the Easter tomb and We foa ell ,0 hg ofIy. own dear ones? o God we are so anxious
 to see some of them that it does seem we cannot wait any longer. We want to
 hold the dear hands and kiss the dear lips. Father send them to us if it be Thy
 will. Let their redeemed spirits hover over our dying pillows Let them come
 soon to take us to thee. Angels Angelsl Angels at the mangeri Angels at the emptied tomb of a risen Lord,
 But there is still another startling fact about this Easter tomb to which
 I woNld call your attention. That Is the garden surrounding it nlnety-nine times
 out of a hundred. when you have pictur- ed this tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, it
 has been in the midst of a garden. Then you have turned to the books of Biblical
 lore and studied the fora of the spring time in the Holy Land. These writers
 have told you that in March and April
 there are flowers everywhere about Jeru- salem. The valleys are covered with them; the hillsides are covered with
 them. They push their golden heads
 between the crevices of every rock. And
 when you think of this angel of my text greeting Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James you think of him piled up banks of roses on every slde and amid great white calla lilies, as sentinels ntt7 Ing up their heads to keep watch, and Amid great hosts of carnations and blue bells and sweet violets and jonquils and tulips and orchids and dahlias and asters and panses and hellotropes and wistaria, You say to me: ''I do not care whether there are oriental flowers or no. When l think of the garden surrounding Christ tomb I think of the most beautiful of all flowers. and then l say Josephs garden was like those flowers and not only like them. but far more beautiful than they 1t Was a Wrecked Garden.
 You are right, my brother No garden of the western hemisphere can be as beautiful as the garden of the Palestine hills where Christ was buried in Josephs tomb But alas. you would be very much in error if you thought this garden about Joseph's tomb was beautiful when Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother Of l James, entered it on that Easter morning. l If you would go with these women there you would find the lilies and the roses and all the other flowers trampled down, It was once beautiful, but now it Is wreck l ed garden. This beautiful garden looks | as though 1t had been uprooted by a herd | of swine or knocked down by a pelting hailstorm What was the matter? No | sooner did this angel of the resurrection appear and Christ come forth from the | tomb than the Roman soldiers fell down | like dead men. They fell flat among the