019. Machpelah: Or. Easter Thoughts

Machpelah: Or. Easter Thoughts

Gen_23:17-18 : ’93And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham.’94

Here is the first cemetery ever laid out. Machpelah was its name. It was an arborescent beauty, where the wound of death was bandaged with foliage. Abraham, a rich man, not being able to bribe the King of Terrors, proposes here, as far as possible, to cover up his ravages. He had, no doubt, previously noticed this region, and now that Sarah, his wife, had died’97that remarkable woman who at ninety years of age had born to her the son Isaac, and who now, after she had reached one hundred and twenty-seven years, had expired’97Abraham is negotiating for a family plot for her last slumber. Ephron owned this real estate, and after, in mock sympathy for Abraham, refusing to take anything for it, now sticks on a big price’97four hundred shekels of silver. This cemetery plot is paid for, and the transfer made, in the presence of witnesses in a public place, for there were no deeds and no halls of records in those early times. Then in a cavern of limestone rock Abraham put Sarah, and, a few years after, himself followed, then Isaac and Rebekah, and then Jacob and Leah. Embowered, picturesque, and memorable Machpelah! That ’93God’92s Acre’94 dedicated by Abraham has been the mother of innumerable mortuary resting-places. The necropolis of every civilized land has vied with its metropolis. The most beautiful hills of Europe outside the great cities are covered with obelisk and funeral vase and arched gateways and columns and parterres in honor of the inhumated. The Appian Way of Rome was bordered by sepulchral commemorations. For this purpose Pisa has its arcades of marble sculptured into exquisite bas-reliefs and the features of dear faces that have vanished. Genoa has its terraces cut into tombs; and Constantinople covers with cypress the silent habitations; and Paris has its Pere-la-Chaise,on whose heights rest Balzac and David and Marshal Ney and Cuvier and La Place and Moli’e8re, and a mighty group of warriors and poets and painters and musicians. In all foreign nations utmost genius on all sides is expended in the work of interment, mummification and incineration.

Our own country consents to be second to none in respect to the lifeless body. Every city and town and neighborhood of any intelligence or virtue has, not many miles away, its sacred enclosure, where affection has engaged sculptors’92 chisel and florists’92 spade and artificer in metals. Our own city has shown its religion as well as its art in the manner in which it holds the memory of those who have passed forever away, by its Cypress Hills and its Evergreens and its Calvary and Holy Cross and Friends’92 cemeteries. All the world knows of Greenwood, with now about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants sleeping among hills that overlook the sea, and by lakes embosomed in an Eden of flowers. Our American Westminster Abbey, an acropolis of mortuary architecture, a Pantheon of mighty ones ascended, elegies in stone, Iliads in marble, whole generations in peace waiting for other generations to join them. No dormitory of breathless sleepers in all the world has so many mighty dead. Among preachers of the Gospel, Bethune and Thomas De Witt and Bishop Janes and Tyng and Abeel, the missionary, and Beecher and Buddington and McClintock and Inskip and Bangs and Chapin and Noah Schenck and Samuel Hanson Cox. Among musicians, the renowned Gottschalk and the holy Thomas Hastings. Among philanthropists, Peter Cooper and Isaac T. Hopper and Lucretia Mott and Isabella Graham and Henry Bergh, the apostle of mercy to the brute creation. Among the literati the Careys, Alice and Phoebe, James K. Paulding and John G. Saxe. Among journalists Bennett and Raymond and Greeley. Among scientists, Ormsby Mitchell, warrior as well as astronomer, and lovingly called by his old soldiers ’93Old Star;’94 the Drapers, splendid men, as I well know, one of them my teacher, the other my classmate. Among inventors, Elias Howe, who, through the sewing machine, did more to alleviate the toils of womanhood than any man that ever lived, and Professor Morse, who gave us magnetic telegraphy; the former doing his work with the needle, the latter with the thunderbolt. Among physicians and surgeons, Joseph C. Hutchinson and Marion Sims and Dr. Valentine Mott, with the following epitaph which he ordered cut in honor of the Christian religion: ’93My implicit faith and hope is in a merciful Redeemer, who is the resurrection and the life. Amen and Amen.’94 This is our American Machpelah, as sacred to us as the Machpelah in Canaan of which Jacob uttered that pastoral poem in one verse: ’93There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac, and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.’94

At this Easter service I ask and answer what may seem a novel question, but it will be found, before I get through, a practical and useful and tremendous question: What will Resurrection Day do for the cemeteries? First, I remark, it will be their supernal beautification. At certain seasons it is customary in all lands to strew flowers over the mounds of the departed. It may have been suggested by the fact that Christ’92s tomb was in a garden. And when I say garden, I do not mean a garden of these latitudes. The late frosts of spring and the early frosts of autumn are so near to each other that there are only a few months of flowers in the field. All the flowers we see today had to be petted and coaxed, and put under shelter or they would not have bloomed at all. They are the children of the conservatories. But at this season and through the most of the year, the Holy Land is all ablush with floral opulence. You find all the royal family of flowers there, some that you supposed indigenous to the far North, and others indigenous to the far South’97the daisy and hyacinth, crocus and anemone, tulip and water-lily, geranium and ranunculus, mignonette and sweet marjoram. In the college at Beyrout you may see Dr. Post’92s collection of about eighteen hundred kinds of Holy Land flowers; while among trees are the oak of frozen climes, and the tamarisk of the tropics, walnut and willow, ivy and hawthorn, ash and elder, pine and sycamore. If such floral and botanical beauties are the wild growths of the fields, think of what a garden must be in Palestine! And in such a garden Jesus Christ slept after, on the soldier’92s spear, his last drop of blood had coagulated. And then see how appropriate that all our cemeteries should be floralized and tree-shaded.

’93Well, then,’94 you say, ’93how can you make out that the Resurrection Day will beautify the cemeteries? Will it not leave them a ploughed-up ground? On that day there will be an earthquake, and will not this split the polished Aberdeen granite, as well as the plain slab that can afford but the two words, ’91Our Mary,’92 or ’91Our Charley’92?’94 Well, I will tell you how Resurrection Day will beautify all the cemeteries. It will be by bringing up the faces that were to us once, and in our memories are to us now, more beautiful to us than any calla lily, and the forms that are to us more graceful than any willow by the waters. Can you think of anything more beautiful than the reappearance of those from whom we have been parted? I do not care which way the tree falls in the blast of the judgment hurricane, or if the ploughshare that day shall turn under the last rose-leaf and the last china-aster, if out of the broken sod shall come the bodies of our loved ones not damaged, but irradiated. The idea of the resurrection gets easier to understand as I hear the phonograph unroll some voice that talked into it or sung into it a year ago, just before our friend’92s decease. You start it off, and then come forth the very tones, the very accentuation, the very cough, the very song, of the person that breathed into it once, but is now departed. If a man can do that, cannot Almighty God, without half trying, revivify the voice of your departed? And if he can restore to us the voice, why not the lips and the tongue and the throat that fashioned the voice? And if the lips and the tongue and the throat, why not then the brain that suggested the words? And if the brain, why not the nerves, of which the brain is the headquarters? And if he can return the nerves, why not the muscles, which are less ingenious? And if the muscles, why not the bones, that are less wonderful? And if the voice and the brain and the muscles and the bones, why not the entire body? If man can do the phonograph, God can do the resurrection.

Will it be the same body that in the last day shall be reanimated? Yes, but infinitely improved. Our bodies change every seven years, and yet, in one sense, it is the same body. On my wrist and the second finger of my right hand there are scars. I made them at twelve years of age, when disgusted at the presence of two warts, I took a red-hot iron and burned them off and burned them out. Since then my body has changed at least a half-dozen times, but those scars prove it is the same body. And we never lose our identity. If God can and does sometimes rebuild a man five, six, ten times in this world, is it mysterious that he can rebuild him once more, and that in the resurrection? If he can do it ten times, I think he can do it eleven times. Then look at the seventeen-year locusts. For seventeen years gone, at the end of seventeen years they appear, and by rubbing the hind leg against the wing make that rattle at which all the husbandmen and vine-dressers tremble as the insectile host takes up the march of devastation. Resurrection every seventeen years.

Another consideration makes the idea of resurrection easier. God made Adam. He was not fashioned after any model. There had never been a human organism, and so there was nothing to copy. At the first attempt God made a perfect man. He made him out of the dust of the earth. If out of ordinary dust of the earth, and without a model, God could make a perfect man, surely out of the extraordinary dust of the mortal body, and with millions of models, God can make each one of us a perfect being in the Resurrection. Surely the last undertaking would not be greater than the first. See the Gospel algebra: ordinary dust minus a model equals a perfect man; extraordinary dust and plus a model equals a resurrection body. Mysteries about it? Yes; that is one reason why I believe it. It would not be much of a God who could do things only as far as I can understand. Mysteries? Yes; but no more about the resurrection of your body than about its present existence. I will explain to you the last mystery of the resurrection, and make it as plain to you as that two and two make four, if you will tell me how your mind, which is entirely independent of your body, can act upon your body so that at your will your eyes open, or your foot walks, or your hand is extended. So, I find nothing in the Bible statement concerning the resurrection that staggers me for a moment. All doubts clear from my mind, I say that the cemeteries, however beautiful now, will be more beautiful when the bodies of our loved ones come up. They will come in improved condition. They will come up rested. The most of them lay down at the last very tired. How often you have heard them say, ’93I am so tired!’94 The fact is, it is a tired world. If I should go around the world, I could not find a person in any condition of life ignorant of the sensation of fatigue. I do not believe there are fifty persons in any assemblage who are not tired. Your head is tired or your back is tired or your foot is tired or your brain is tired or your nerves are tired. Long journeying or business application or bereavement or sickness have put on you heavy weights. So the vast majority of those that went out of this world went out fatigued. About the poorest place to rest in is this world. Its atmosphere, its surroundings, and even its hilarities are exhausting. So God stops our earthly life, and mercifully closes the eyes and quiets the feet and folds the hands and more especially gives quiescence to the lung and heart, that have not had ten minutes’92 rest since the first respiration and the first beat. If a drummer-boy in the army were compelled to beat his drum twenty-four hours without stopping, his officer would be court-martialed for cruelty. If the drummer-boy should be commanded to beat his drum for a week without ceasing, day and night, he would die in attempting it. But under your vestment is a poor heart that began its drum-beat for the march of life thirty or forty or sixty or eighty years ago, and it has had no furlough by day or night; and, whether in conscious or comatose state, it went right on, for if it had stopped seven seconds your life would have closed. And your heart will keep going until some time after your spirit has flown, for the auscultator says that after the last respiration of lung and the last throb of pulse, and after the spirit is released, the heart keeps beating on for a time. What a mercy, then, it is that the grave is the place where that wondrous machinery of ventricle and artery can halt! Under the healthful chemistry of the soil, all the wear and tear of nerve and muscles and bone will be subtracted and that bath of good, fresh, clean soil will wash off the last ache, and then some of the same style of dust out of which the body of Adam was constructed may be infused into the resurrection body. How can the bodies of the human race, which have had no replenishment from the dust since the time of Adam in Paradise, get any recuperation from the storehouse from which he was constructed without going back into the dust? That original, life-giving material having been once added to the body as it once was, and all the defects left behind, what a body will be the resurrection body! And will not hundreds of thousands of such appearing above the Gowanus Heights make Greenwood more beautiful than any June morning after a shower? The dust of the earth being the original material for fashioning the first human being, we have got to go back to the same place to get a perfect body. Factories are apt to be rough places, and those who toil in them have their garments grimy and their hands smutched. But who cares for that, when they turn out for us beautiful musical instruments or exquisite upholstery? What though the grave is a rough place, it is a resurrection-body manufactory, and from it shall come the radiant and resplendent forms of our friends on the brightest morning the world saw ever. You put into a factory cotton, and it comes out apparel. You put into a factory lumber and lead, and it comes out pianos and organs. And so into the factory of the grave you put in pneumonias and consumptions and they come out health. You put in groans and they come out hallelujahs. For us, on the final day, the most attractive places will not be the parks or the gardens or the palaces, but the cemeteries.

We are not told in what season that day will come. If it should be winter, those who come up will be more lustrous than the snow that covered them. If in the autumn, those who come up will be more gorgeous than the woods after the frosts have penciled them. If in the spring, the bloom on which they tread will be dull compared with the rubicund of their cheeks. Oh, the perfect resurrection body! Almost every one has some defective spot in his physical constitution: a dull ear or a dim eye or a rheumatic foot or a neuralgic brow or a twisted muscle or a weak side or an inflamed tonsil or some point at which the east wind or a season of overwork assaults him. But the resurrection body shall be without one weak spot, and all that the doctors and nurses and apothecaries of earth will thereafter have to do will be to rest without interruption after the broken nights of their earthly existence. Not only will that day be the beautification of well-kept cemeteries, but some of the graveyards that have been neglected and been the pasture-ground for cattle, and the rooting-places for swine, will for the first time have attractiveness given them. It was a shame that in that place ungrateful generations planted no trees, and twisted no garlands, and sculptured no marble for their Christian ancestry; but on the day of which I speak the resurrected shall make the place of their feet glorious. From under the shadow of the church, where they slumbered among nettles and mullein stalks and thistles and slabs aslant, they shall rise with a glory that shall flush the windows of the village church, and by -the bell-tower that used to call them to worship, and above the old spire beside which their prayers formerly ascended. What triumphal procession never did for a street, what an oratorio never did for an academy, what an orator never did for a brilliant auditory, what obelisk never did for a king, Resurrection morn will do for all the cemeteries.

This Easter tells us that in Christ’92s resurrection our resurrection, if we are his, and the resurrection of all the pious dead, are assured, for he was ’93the first fruits of them that slept.’94 Renan says he did not rise, but five hundred and eighty witnesses, sixty of them Christ’92s enemies, say he did rise, for they saw him after he had risen. If he did not rise, how did sixty armed soldiers let him get away? Surely, sixty living soldiers ought to be able to keep one dead man! Blessed be God! He did get away. After his resurrection Mary Magdalene saw him. Cleopas saw him. Ten disciples in an upper room at Jerusalem saw him. On a mountain the eleven saw him. Five hundred at once saw him. Professor Ernest Renan, who did not see him, will excuse us for taking the testimony of the five hundred and eighty who did see him. He got away, and that makes me sure that our departed loved ones and we ourselves shall get away. Freed himself from the shackles of clod, he is not going to leave us and ours in the lurch. There will be no door-knob on the inside of our family sepulcher, for we cannot come out, of ourselves; but there is a door-knob on the outside, and that Jesus shall lay hold of, and opening, will say: ’93Good morning! You have slept long enough! Arise! Arise!’94 And then what flutter of wings, and what flashing of rekindled eyes, and what gladsome rushing across the family lot, with cries of ’93Father, is that you?’94 ’93Mother, is that you?’94 ’93My darling, is that you?’94 ’93How you all have changed! The cough gone, the croup gone, the consumption gone, the paralysis gone, the weariness gone. Come, let us ascend together! The older ones first, the younger ones next! Quick, now get into line! The skyward procession has already started! Steer now by that embankment of cloud for the nearest gate!’94 And as we ascend, on one side the earth gets smaller until it is no larger than a mountain, and smaller until it is no larger than a palace, and smaller until it is no larger than a ship, and smaller until it is no larger than a wheel, and smaller until it is no larger than a speck. Farewell, dissolving earth! But on the other side, as we rise, heaven at first appears no larger than your hand. And nearer it looks like a chariot and nearer it looks like a throne and nearer it looks like a star and nearer it looks like a sun and nearer it looks like a universe. Hail, scepters that shall always wave! Hail, anthems that shall always roll! Hail, companionships never again to be broken, and friendships never again to part! That is what Resurrection Day will do for all the cemeteries and graveyards from the Machpelah that was opened by Father Abraham in Hebron to the Machpelah yesterday consecrated. And that makes Lady Huntington’92s immortal rhythm most apposite:

When thou, my righteous Judge, shalt come

To take thy ransomed people home,

Shall I among them stand?

Shall such a worthless worm as I,

Who sometimes am afraid to die,

Be found at thy right hand?

Among thy saints let me be found,

Whene’92er the archangel’92s trump shall sound,

To see thy smiling face;

Then loudest of the throng I’92ll sing,

While heaven’92s resounding arches ring

With shouts of sovereign grace.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage