Gloucester County Democrat., 1906-07-05

common affinities of our kind which
| tend to make less forbidding the in.
exorable certainities of the dreaded
transition from this world of life to
| that mysterious realm which but the
slender interspace of day, an hour
or moment of time may bring to our
realization?
Whether by long or short jour
ney the place of burial is the bourne
| to which we are all tending with our
life burden There, all of the earth
earthly, however fair or beautiful, as
appointed in the beginning, is to find
it's commingling with the dust from
which it was fashioned Then, why
should it be a place of desolation to
suggest only feelings of gloom and
Edread? More fitting is it not, that
there should be bloom of roses and
violets and lilies, rather than trail
| ing of brambles, and carpeting of vel
vet grasses than cumbering weeds?
see a mother bending low in her
grief and loneliness and sorrow over
a new made grave. She is streWing
that little mound under which lies the
babe of her love and hopes with roses.
Her stricken heart is there her all of
| life. Her tears fall fast as she re-
members all the innocent ways, the
laugh, the smiles, the prattle OF the
little one. In her devotion she
breathes a prayer to him who said in
his loving regard Suffer little chill
dren to come unto me and forbid
them not, for of such is the kingdom
of heaven" Then, in her comfort and
resignation she rises and goes her
ways, and often again as the days
pass she returns and brings her sweet
tribute of flowers where her darling
is sleeping, and she is ever mindful
that no unsightly weeds shall choke
out the grasses on the little mound
Now, who shall say that all this tender
ness and affection has been in vain?
Ask that mother and she will tell you
that she found a measure of consoIa-
ton in the tears she shed, in the
prayers she breathed, and in the tri-
butte of flowers she laid SO lovingly
that her burden was the lighter that
she could thus come in the quiet of the
morning or the evening and manifest
| her heart feelings for the departed
one. In my love for all that pertains
+ to this locality of the olden time, and
| in my fondness for the memories and
associations of this house and of the
people who have worshipped under its
roof, / am glad to know and see that
a faithful few, moved and guided by
the ancient impulses, have held togeth-
er in zeal and unity, through all the
| changes and preserved the faith, ways
and traditions of the ancestors, and
! that the first day and mid-week meet
ings have been held without Interrupt
! ton through all the years. All honor
and praise, let me say, for these new
workers, who have taken up the sill
yer thread and are carrying it on for
the hands and hearts of those who
shall come after them. They are do
ing the work for which their success
sors will rise up and call them bless
ed
Almost hundred years have passed
since these foundations were laid, and
it was a fitting circumstance that the
land for the building of this edifice
had once been held by William Penn
of great and glorious memory.
Ny friends, love to go back in i'm
agination and note the establishment
one by one of the old Quaker meeting
houses, as they arose in the wastes of
the primeval wilderness in the coun-
ties of Salem, Gloucester and Burling-
ton all along the Delaware and its
af1uents, and across to the Atlantic
seaboard from the river to the ocean,
on the coming of accessions of the op-
pressed, who had heard the joyful It'd
ings of the far away region. and de-
sired to cast their lots with their
brethren and wait and labor with them
for the fruition of their hopes. Rever-
ent landmarks are these quaint struc-
lures, standing in their simplicity
and modesty in these South Jersey
neighborhoods. In our times of good
will and fraternal liberation they point
silently but eloquently to that wide de-
parture from the sway of blind zeal
and frenzied bigotry which filed the
old English homes with lamentations
and mourning during the reigns of the
Stuart. Kings and the rule of Lord
Protector Cromwell Under their
homely roofs, through the generations
of our early history, were gathered as
brave hearts and as faithful workers
as ever labored in the vineyard of the
Lord! In them were kept alive and
burning, the fires which George Fox
had lighted as he went up and down
the highways and byways of England
proclaiming anew the neglected and
forgotten truths which Jesus the
Christ had presented in his time So
long before.
Beginning with the log structure
raised in 1876 for public worship by
the followers of John Fenwick in the
ship Griffin on the shore of Salem
creek, around them on the l0WlandS