498. The Queen of Festivals

The Queen of Festivals

1Co_15:54 : ’93Death is swallowed up in victory.’94

About eighteen hundred and fifty Easter mornings have wakened the earth. In France for three centuries the almanacs made the year begin at Easter, until Charles IX made the year begin at January first. In the Tower of London there is a royal pay-roll of Edward I, on which there is an entry of eighteen pence for four hundred colored and pictured Easter eggs, with which the people sported. In Russia, slaves were fed and alms were distributed on Easter. Ecclesiastical councils met in Pontus, in Gaul, in Rome, in Achaia to decide the particular day, and after a controversy more animated than gracious, decided it; and now through all Christendom, in some way the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon or next after March twenty-first is filled with Easter rejoicing.

The royal court of the Sabbaths is made up of fifty-two. Fifty-one are princes in the royal household, but Easter is queen. She wears richer diadem, she sways a more jeweled scepter, and in her smile nations are irradiated. How welcome she is when, after a harsh winter and late spring, she seems to step out of the snowbank rather than the conservatory, to come out of the North instead of the South, out of the arctic rather than the tropics, discounting from the icy equinox; but welcome this queenly day, holding high in her right hand the wrenched-off bolt of Christ’92s sepulcher, and holding high in her left hand the key to all the cemeteries in Christendom.

My text is an ejaculation. It is spun out of hallelujahs. Paul wrote right on in his argument about the resurrection and observed all the laws of logic; but when he came to write the words of the text, his fingers and his pen and the parchment on which he wrote took fire, and he cried out, ’93Death is swallowed up in victory!’94 It is an exciting thing to see an army routed and flying. They run each other down. They scatter everything valuable in the track. Unwheeled artillery. Hoof of horse on breast of wounded and dying man. You have read of the French falling back from Sedan, of Napoleon’92s track of ninety thousand corpses in the snowbanks of Russia, of the retreat of our own armies from Manassas, or of the five kings tumbling over the rocks of Beth-horan with their armies, while the hail-storms of heaven and the swords of Joshua’92s host struck them with their fury. In my text is a worse discomfiture. It seems that a black giant proposed to conquer the earth. He gathered for his host all the aches and pains and malarias and cancers and distempers and epidemics of the ages. He marched them down, drilling them in the northeast wind and amid the slush of tempests. He threw up barricades of grave-mound. He pitched tent of charnel house. Some of the troops marched with slow tread commanded by consumptions, some in double-quick, commanded by pneumonias. Some he took by long besiegement of evil habit, and some by one stroke of the battle-ax of casualty. With bony hand he pounded at the door of hospitals and sick rooms, and won all the victories in all the great battlefields of all the five continents. Forward, march! ordered the conqueror of conquerors, and all the generals and commanders-in-chief, and all presidents and kings and sultans and czars dropped under the feet of his war-charger. But one Christmas night his antagonist was born. As most of the plagues and sicknesses and despotisms come out of the East, it was appropriate that the new conqueror should come out of the same quarter. Power is given him to awaken all the fallen of all the centuries and of all lands, and marshal them against the black giant. Fields have already been won, but the last day of the world’92s existence will see the decisive battle. When Christ shall lead forth his two brigades, the brigade of the risen dead and the brigade of the celestial host, the black giant will fall back, and the brigade from the riven sepulchers will take him from beneath and the brigade of descending immortals will take him from above, and death shall be swallowed up in victory.

The old braggart that threatened the conquest and demolition of the planet has lost his throne, has lost his scepter, has lost his palace, has lost his prestige, and the one word written over all the gates of mausoleum and catacomb and necropolis, on cenotaph and sarcophagus, on the lonely khan of the arctic explorer, and on the catafalque of great cathedral, written in capitals of azalia and calla-lily, written in musical cadence, written in doxology of great assemblages, written on the sculptured door of the family vault is ’93victory.’94 Coronal word, embannered word, apocalyptic word, chief word of triumphal arch under which conquerors return.

Victory! Word shouted at Culloden and Balaklava and Blenheim, at Megiddo and Solferino, at Marathon, where the Athenians drove back the Medes; at Poictiers, where Charles Martel broke the ranks of the Saracens; at Salamis, where Themistocles in the great sea-fight confounded the Persians, and at the door of the Eastern cavern of chiseled rock, where Christ came out through a recess and throttled the King of Terrors, and put him back in the niche from which the celestial Conqueror had just emerged. Aha! when the jaws of the Eastern mausoleum took down the black giant ’93death was swallowed up in victory.’94 I 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 Kenilworth Castle are no more in ruins than is the sepulcher. We shall have no more to do with death than we have with the cloak-room at a governor’92s or President’92s levee. We stop at such cloak-room and leave in charge of a 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 go out of this world we are going to a King’92s banquet, and to a reception 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 brightened and purified and glorified.

You and I do not want our bodies returned 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 a chemistry of soil and heat and cold and changing seasons, out of which God will reconstruct them as much better than they are now as the body of the rosiest and healthiest child that bounds over the lawn in Central Park is better than the sickest patient in Bellevue Hospital. But as to our soul, we will cross right over, not waiting for obsequies, independent of obituary, into a state in every 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 universe, the four walls burnished 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 little importance whether we are cremated 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 be universally adopted by law as well as by general consent. Many of the mightiest and best spirits have gone through this process. Thousands and tens of thousands of God’92s children have been cremated’97P. P. Bliss and wife, the evangelistic singers, cremated by accident at Ashtabula Bridge; John Rodgers, cremated by persecution; Latimer and Ridley, cremated at Oxford; Pothinus, and Blandina, a slave, and Alexander, a physician, and their comrades cremated at the order of Marcus Aurelius’97at least a hundred thousand of Christ’92s disciples cremated, and there can be no doubt about the resurrection of their bodies. If the world lasts as much longer as it has thus far, there perhaps may be no room for the large acreage set apart for resting-places, but there is plenty of room yet, and the race need not pass that bridge of fire until it comes to it. The most of us prefer the old way. But whether out of natural disintegration or cremation we shall get that luminous, buoyant, gladsome, transcendent, magnificent, inexplicable structure called the resurrection body, you will have it, I will have it. I say to you today, as Paul said to Agrippa: ’93Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?’94 That far-up cloud, higher than the hawk flies, higher than the eagle flies, what is it made of? Drops of water from a river, other drops from a lake, still other drops from a stagnant pool, but now embodied in a cloud and kindled by the sun. If God can make such a lustrous cloud out of water drops, many of them soiled and impure and fetched from miles away, can he not transport the fragments of a human body from the earth and out of them build a radiant body? Cannot God, who owns all the material out of which bones and muscle and flesh are made, set them up again if they have fallen? If a manufacturer of telescopes drop a telescope on the floor and it breaks, can he not mend it again so you can see through it? And if God drops the human eye into the dust, the eye which he originally fashioned, can he not restore it? Ay, if the manufacturer of the telescope by the use of a new glass and a change of material can make a better instrument than that which was originally constructed, and actually improve it, do you not think the fashioner of the human eye may improve its sight and multiply the natural eye by the thousandfold additional forces of the resurrection eye?

’93Why should it be thought with you an incredible thing that God should raise the dead?’94 Things all around us suggest it. Out of what grew all these flowers? Out of the mold and the earth. Resurrected! Resurrected! The radiant butterfly, where did it come from? The loathsome caterpillar. That albatross that smites the tempest with its wings, where did it come from? A senseless shell. Near Bergerac, France, in a Celtic tomb under a block, were found flower seeds that had been buried two thousand years. The explorer took the flower seed and planted it, and it came up; it bloomed in bluebell and heliotrope. Two thousand years ago buried, yet resurrected. A traveler says he found in a mummy-pit in Egypt garden peas that had been buried there three thousand years ago. He brought them out and on the fourth of June, 1844, he planted them, and in thirty days they sprang up. Buried three thousand years, yet resurrected. ’93Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?’94

Where did all this silk come from’97the silk that adorns your persons and your homes? In the hollow of a staff a Greek missionary brought from China to Europe the progenitors of those worms that now supply the silk markets of many nations. The pageantry of bannered host and the luxurious articles of commercial emporium blazing out from the silkworms. And who shall be surprised if out of this insignificant earthly body, this insignificant earthly life, our bodies unfold into something worthy of the coming eternities? Put silver into diluted nitre and it dissolves. Is the silver gone forever? No. Put in some pieces of copper and the silver reappears. If one force dissolves another force organizes.

’93Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?’94 The insects flew and the worms crawled last autumn feebler and feebler, and then stopped. They have taken no food. They want none. They lie dormant and insensible, but soon the south wind will blow the resurrection trumpet, and the air and the earth will be full of them. Do you not think that God can do as much for our bodies as he does for the wasps and the spiders and the snails? This morning at half-past four o’92clock there was a resurrection. Out of the night, the day. In a few weeks there will be a resurrection in all our gardens. Why not some day a resurrection amid all the graves?

Ever and anon there are instances of men and women entranced. A trance is death followed by resurrection after a few days; total suspension of mental power and voluntary action. Rev. William Tennent, a great evangelist of the last generation, of whom Dr. Archibald Alexander, a man far from being sentimental, wrote in most eulogistic terms’97Rev. William Tennent seemed to die. His spirit apparently left the body. People came in day after day and said: ’93He is dead, he is dead.’94 But the soul that fled returned, and Will Tennent lived to write what he had seen while his soul was gone. It may be found some time that what is called suspended animation or comatose state is brief death, giving the soul an excursion into the next world, from which it comes back, a furlough of a few hours granted from the conflict of life to which it must return. Do not this waking up of men from trance and this waking up of insects from winter lifelessness and this waking up of grains buried three thousand years ago make it easier for you to believe that your body and mine after the vacation of the grave shall rouse and rally, though there be three thousand years between our last breath and the sounding of the archangelic reveille? Physiologists tell us that while the most of our bodies are built with such wonderful economy that we can spare nothing, and the loss of a finger is a hinderment, and the injury of a toe-joint makes us lame, still that we have two or three useless physical apparati, and no anatomist or physiologist has ever been able to tell what they are good for. They may be the foundation of the resurrection body, worth nothing to us in this state, to be indispensably valuable in the next state. The Jewish rabbis and the scientists of our day have found out that there are two or three superfluities of body that are something gloriously suggestive of another state.

I called at my friend’92s house one summer day. I found the yard all piled up with the rubbish of carpenter’92s and mason’92s work. The door was off. The plumbers had torn up the floor. The roof was being lifted in cupola. All the pictures were gone, and the paper-hangers were doing their work. All the modern improvements were being introduced into that dwelling. There was not a room in the house fit to live in at that time, although a month before when I visited that house everything was so beautiful I could not have suggested an improvement. My friend had gone with his family to the Holy Land, expecting to come back at the end of six months, when the building was to he done. And, oh, what was his joy when at the end of six months, he returned and he found the old house had been enlarged and improved and glorified. That is your body. It looks well now’97all the rooms filled with health, and we could hardly make a suggestion. But after a while your soul will go to the Holy Land, and while you are gone the old house of your tabernacle will be entirely reconstructed from cellar to attic, and every nerve, muscle and bone and tissue and artery must be hauled over, and the old structure will be burnished and adorned and raised and cupolaed and enlarged, and all the improvements of heaven introduced, and you will move into it on resurrection day. ’93For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’94 Oh, what a day when body and soul meet again! They are very fond of each other. Did your body ever have a pain and your soul not pity it? or your body have a joy and your soul not re-echo it? or, changing the question, did your soul ever have any trouble and your body not sympathize with it, growing wan and weak under the depressing influence? Or did your soul ever have a gladness but your body celebrated it with kindled eye and cheek and elastic step? Surely God never intended two such good friends to be very long separated. And so when the world’92s last Easter morning shall come the soul will descend, crying, ’93Where is my body?’94 and the body will ascend, saying, ’93Where is my soul?’94 and the Lord of the resurrection will bring them together, and it will be a perfect soul in a perfect body, introduced by a perfect Christ into a perfect heaven. Victory! Do you wonder that on Easter day we swathe our churches with garlands? Do you wonder we celebrate it with the most consecrated voice of song that we can invite, with the deftest fingers on organ and cornet, and with doxologies that beat these arches with the billows of sound as the sea smites the basalt at Giant’92s Causeway? Only the bad disapprove of the Resurrection. A cruel heathen warrior heard Mr. Moffat, the missionary, preach about the resurrection, and he said to the missionary: ’93Will my father rise in the last day?’94 ’93Yes,’94 said the missionary. ’93Will all the dead in battle rise?’94 said the cruel chieftain. ’93Yes,’94 said the missionary. Then said the warrior, ’93Let me hear no more about the resurrection, there can be no resurrection, there shall be no resurrection. I have slain thousands in battle. Will they rise?’94 Ah, there will be more to rise on that day than those whose crimes have never been repented of will want to see. But for all others who allowed Christ to be their pardon and their life and their resurrection it will be a day of victory.

The thunders of the last day will be the salvo that greets you into harbor. The lightnings will be only the torches of triumphal procession marching down to escort you home. The burning worlds flashing through immensity will be the rockets celebrating your coronation on thrones where you will reign forever and forever and forever. Where is death? What have we to do with death? As your reunited body and soul swing off from this planet on that last day you will see deep gashes all up and down the hills, deep gashes all through the valleys, and they will be the emptied graves, they will be the abandoned sepulchers, with rough ground tossed on each side of them, and slabs will lie uneven on the rent hillocks, and there will be fallen monuments and cenotaphs, and then for the first you will appreciate the full exhilaration of the text, ’93Death is swallowed up in victory.’94

Hail the Lord of earth and heaven!

Praise to thee by both be given;

Thee we greet triumphant now,

Hail the resurrection thou!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage