429. Aromatics for Easter

Aromatics for Easter

Luk_24:1 : ’93Bringing the spices which they had prepared.’94

Enchanting work have I before me this Easter morning, for, imitating these women of the text, who brought aromatics to the mausoleum of Christ, I am going to unroll frankincense and balm and attar or roses and cardamon from the East Indies, and odors from Arabia, and, when we can inhale no more of the perfume, then we will talk of sweet sounds and hear from the music that shall wake the dead. In that first Easter scene, Christ was lying flat on his back, lifeless, amidst sculptured rocks’97rocks over him, rocks under him, and a door of rocks all bounded by the flowers and fountains of Joseph’92s country-seat. Then a bright immortal, having descended from heaven, quick and flashing as a falling meteor, picks up the door of rock and puts it aside as though it were a chair and sits on it. Then Christ unwraps Himself of his mortuary apparel, and takes the turban from His head and folds it up deliberately and lays it down in one place, and then puts the shroud in another place, and comes out and finds that the soldiers who had been on guard are lying around, pallid and in a dead swoon, their swords bent and twisted. The illustrious Prisoner of the tomb is discharged, and five hundred people see Him at once. An especial congress of ecclesiastics called, pay a bribe to the resuscitated soldiers to say that there was no resurrection, but that while they were overcome of slumber the Christians had played resurrectionists and stolen the corpse.

The Marys are at the tomb with aromatics. Why did not those women of the text bring thorns and nettles? for these would more thoroughly have expressed the piercing sorrows of themselves and their Lord. Why did they not bring some national ensign, such as that of the Roman eagle, typical of conquest? No; they brought aromatics, suggestive to me of the fact that the Gospel is to sweeten and deodorize the world. The world has so much of putrefaction and malodor that Christ is going to roll over it waves of frankincense and sprinkle it all over with sweet-smelling myrrh. Thousands of years before Solomon had said that Christ was a lily, and Isaiah had declared that under the gospel the desert would bloom like the rose. The world was slow to take the floral hint, but now the women of the text bring hands full and arms full of redolence and perhaps unwittingly confirm and emphasize the lesson of deodorization. When Christ’92s Gospel has conquered all the earth the last offense to the olfactories will have left the world; sweet, pure air will have blown through every home, and churches will be freed from the curse of ill ventilation, and the world will become two great gardens, two empurpled and emblazoned and emparadised hemispheres. Sin is a buzzard, holiness is a dove. Sin is nightshade, holiness is a flower. If you are trying to reform the world, open the windows of that tenement house and pour through it a draught of God’92s pure atmosphere, and set a geranium or heliotrope on the window-sill; cleanse the air, and you will help cleanse the soul. How dare this world so often insult that feature of the human face which God has made the most prominent feature in human physiognomy? To prove how He Himself loves aromatics, I bring the fact that there are millions of flowers on prairies and in mountain fastnesses the fragrance of which no human being ever breathes, and He must have grown them there for His own regalement. And for the compliment the world paid Christ by giving Him a sepulchre in Joseph’92s garden, He will yet make the whole earth a garden. Yes, He expressed His delight with fragrance in the first book of the Bible, when He said: ’93The Lord smelled a sweet savor;’94 and He filled the air of the ancient tabernacle and temple with sweet incense; and there are small bottles of perfume in heaven, described in Revelation as golden vials full of odors. I preach an ambrosial Gospel which will yet extirpate from the world all foulness and rancidity, and the last noisomeness and the last mephitic gas. Glad am I that, though the world had chiefly spikes for the Saviour’92s feet and thorns for the Saviour’92s brow, the Magi put frankincense upon His cradle and the Marys brought frankincense for His grave.

Notice, also, that Christ’92s mausoleum was opened by concussion. It was a great earthquake that put its twisted key into the involved and labyrinthine lock of that tomb. Concussion! That is the power that opens all the tombs that are opened at all. Tomb of soul, and tomb of nations. Concussions between England and the thirteen colonies, and forth came free government in America. Concussion between France and Germany, and forth came republicanism for France. Concussion among the rocks on Mount Sinai, and on two of them was left a perfect law for all ages. Concussion among the rocks around Calvary, and the Crucifixion was made the more overwhelming. Concussion between the United States and Mexico, and a vast area of country becomes ours. Concussion between England and France, and most of this continent west of the Mississippi becomes the property of the American Union. Concussion between iceberg and iceberg, between bowlder and bowlder, and a thousand other concussions put this world into shape for man’92s residence. Concussion between David and his enemies, and out came the Psalms, which otherwise would never have been written. Concussion between God’92s will and man’92s will, and, ours overthrown, we become new creatures in Christ Jesus. Concussion of misfortune and trial for many of the good, and out comes their consecration.

Do not, therefore, be frightened when you see the great upheavals, the great agitations, the great earthquakes, whether among the rocks, or among the nations, or in individual experience. Out of them God will bring best results, and most magnificent consequences. Hear the crash all around the Lord’92s sarcophagus and see the glorious reanimation of its dead inhabitant. Concussion! If ever a general European war, which the world has been expecting for so many years, should come, a concussion so wide and so tremendous would not leave a throne in Europe standing as it now is. The nations of the earth are tired of having their kings born to them, and they would after a while elect their kings, and there would be an Italian republic, and a German republic, and a Russian republic, and an Austrian republic, and out of the cracks and chasms of that concussion would come resurrection for all Europe. Stagnation is deathful; concussion is Messianic.

Notice also what the angel did with the stone after he had rolled it away from the mouth of the Saviour’92s mausoleum. The Book says he rolled away the stone from the door, and sat upon it. We ministers have preached sermons about the angel’92s rolling away the stone, but we did not remark upon the sublime fact that he sat upon it. Why? Certainly not because he was tired. The angels are a fatigueless race, and this one could have shouldered every rock around the tomb, and carried it away, and not been besweated. He sat upon it, I think, to show you, and to show me, that we may make every earthly obstacle a throne of triumph. The young men who get their education easily seldom amount to much. Those who had to struggle for it come out atop. There is no end of the story of studying by pine-knot lights, and reading while the mules of the towpath were resting, and of going hungry and patched and barefoot, and submitting to all kinds of privation to get scholastic advantages. But the day of graduation came, and they took their diplomas with hands nervous from night study, and pale from lack of food, and put them in the pockets of threadbare coats. Then, starting for another career of hardship, they entered a profession or a business where they found plenty of disheartenment and no help. Yet saying: ’93I will succeed; God help me, for no one else will,’94 they went on and up until the world was compelled to acknowledge and admire them. The fact was that the obstacle between their discouraging start and their complete success was a rock of fifty tons, but by resolution, nerved and muscularized and reinforced by Almighty God, they threw their arms around the obstacle and with the strength of a supernatural wrestler, rolled back the stone, and, having become more than conquerors, they sat upon it. Men and women are good and great and useful just in proportion as they have had to overcome obstacles. You can count upon the fingers of one hand all the great singers, great orators, great poets, great patriots, and great Christians who never had a struggle. That angel who made a throne of a bowlder at Christ’92s tomb went back to heaven, and I warrant that, having been born in heaven and always had an easy time, he now speaks of that wrestle with the rock as the most interesting chapter in all his angelic lifetime. Oh, men and women with obstacles in the way, I tell you that those obstacles are only thrones that you may after a while sit on. Is the obstacle in your way sickness? Conquer it by accomplishing more for God during your invalidism than many accomplish who have never known an ailment. Are you persecuted? By your uprightness and courage compel the world to acknowledge your moral heroism. Is it poverty? Conquer it by being happy in the companionship of your Lord and Master, who in all His life owned but sixty-two cents, and that He got from a fish’92s mouth and immediately paid it all out in taxes to the Roman assessor, and who would have been buried in a potter’92s field had not Joseph of Arimathea tendered a tomb; for He who had not where to lay His head during His life had a borrowed pillow for the last slumber. There is no throne that you are sure to keep except that which you make out of vanquished obstacles.

An unappreciative republic at the ballot-box denied Horace Greeley the highest place at the national capital, but could not keep him from rising from the steps of a New York printing office on which he sat one chilly morning waiting for the boss printer to come that he might get a job, until he mounted the highest throne of American journalism. He rolled back the stone and sat upon it. A poor orphan boy, picking up chips at Richmond, Va., accosted by a passing sea captain and invited to come on board his vessel, drops the chips and starts right away, and is tossed from port to port, and, homeless and friend-less, wanders one day along Tremont street, Boston, and sees Park Street Church open, and, speaking of it afterward on a great occasion and using sailor’92s vernacular, as was usual with him, he says: ’93I put in, I up helm, unfurled sail, and made for the gallery, and scud under bare poles to the corner pew. Then I hove to and came to anchor. The old man, Dr. Griffin, was just naming his text. Pretty soon, he unfurled the mainsail, raised the topsail, ran up the pennants to free breeze, and I tell you the old Gospel ship never sailed more prosperously. The salt spray flew in every direction, but more especially did it run down my cheeks. Satan had to strike sail, his guns were dismounted or spiked, his various craft by which he led sinners captive were all beached, and the captain of the Lord’92s hosts rode forth, conquering and to conquer.’94 Before that sailor boy was poverty, but he conquered it; and orphanage, but he conquered it; and ignorance, but he conquered it; and the scoff of the world, but he conquered it; and he rose till every sailor’92s Bethel in the world blessed him, and great anniversary platforms invited him, and Charles Dickens, and Frederika Bremer, and poets and orators and senators sat electrified at his feet, and his Gospelizing influence will go on until the last Jack tar is converted and the sea shall give up its dead. All the obstacles of his life seemed gathered into one great bowlder, but Edward T. Taylor, the world-renowned sailors’92 preacher, rolled back the stone and sat upon it.

Yet, do not make the mistake that many do of sitting on it before it is rolled away. It is bound to go if you only tug away at it. If not before, then I think about twelve o’92clock noon of Resurrection Day you will see something worth seeing. The general impression is that the resurrection will take place in the morning. The ascent to the skies will hardly occur immediately. It will take some hours to form the procession skyward, and we will all want to take a look at this world before we leave it forever, and see the surroundings of the couch where our bodies have long been sleeping. On that Easter morning the marble, whether it lie flat upon your grave or stand up in monument, will have to be jostled and shaken and rolled aside by the angel of resurrection, and while waiting for your kindred to gather and the procession to form, your resurrected body may sit in holy triumph upon that chiseled stone which marked the place of your protracted slumber. On that day what a fragile thing will be Aberdeen granite and column of basalt, and the mortar which will rattle out of the walls of vaults that have been sealed a thousand years, and the Taj, built for a queen in India, a sepulchre two hundred and seventy-five feet high, and made of jasper and cornelian, and turquoise and lapis-lazuli, and amethyst and onyx, and sapphire and diamond, and which shall that day rain into glittering dust on groves of banyan and bamboo and palm. And all under what power? Ponderous crowbars wielded by giants? No. Thunderbolt cleaving asunder the granite? No. Battering ram swung against the walls of cemeteries? No. Dynamite drilled under the foundations of cenotaph and abbey? No. It will be done by music. Nothing but music, sweet but all-penetrating music. The trumpet shall sound! You say that is figurative; how do you know? But, whether literal or figurative, it means music anyhow. The trumpet, that stirring, incisive, mighty instrument, with a natural compass from G below the staff to E above, blown above Sinai when the law was given, blown around Jericho when the walls tumbled, blown when Gideon discomfited the Midianites, blown when the ancient Israelites were gathered for worship, to be blown for the raising of the dead in the last great Easter. The mother, who, when the child must be awakened, kisses its eyes awake, does well. But the trumpet, which, when the dead are to be aroused, kisses the ear awake, does better. Be not surprised if the dead are to be awakened by music, Why, that is the way now we raise the dead. Take the statistics, if you can, of the millions of souls that have been raised from the death of sin by hymns, by psalms, by solos, by anthems, by flutes, by violins, by organs, by trumpets. Under God what hosts have been resurrected by Ira D. Sankey, by Thomas Hastings, by William B. Bradbury, by Lowell Mason, by motherly lullabies, by church doxologies, by oratorios. If we raise the dead now by music, be not surprised that on the last day the dead are to be raised by music.

The trumpet shall sound! And that instrument shall have plenty of work to do on the day mentioned. It will have to sound through all the pyramids, which are only names for sepulchres, and liberate the buried kings; through hypogean graves which were built in the mounds and the hypogean graves which were dug in rocks, and through the nine hundred winding miles of catacombs under and around the Roman Campagna, where over seven million human beings sleep. Through all the crystal sarcophagi of Atlantic and Pacific and Mediterranean and Caspian and Black Sea deeps; over all the battlefields of continents, until all the fallen troops of English and French and Italian and German and Russian and Persian and American and the world’92s battlefields answer the call. Marathon, come up! Agincourt, come up! Blenheim, come up! Acre, come up! Hohenlinden, come up! Sedan, come up! Gettysburg, come up!

Near Sharpsburg during our Civil War, when I was, with some others under the auspices of the Christian Commission, looking after the wounded, Federal and Confederate, one moonlight night I was where I could look down upon the tents of the sleeping army. Oh, what an imposing spectacle! But my subject calls us to look down upon a mightier host of soldiers slumbering their last sleep in the bivouac of the dust: the seven hundred and fifty thousand slain in the Crimean War, the eight hundred thousand slain in our American war, the twenty-five million slain in Jewish wars, the thirty-two million slain in the wars of Ghengis Khan, the eighty million slain in the wars of the Crusaders, the one hundred and eighty million slain in the Roman wars. Ay, according to Dr. Dick, the dead in war, if each one occupied four feet of ground, would make enough graves to reach four hundred and forty-two times around the earth.

The most of people are dead. The world is a house of two rooms, a basement and a room above ground. The basement has two to one, three to one, four to one, more occupants than the superstructure. Sickness and war and death have been stacking their harvests for near six thousand years. Where are those who saw the Pilgrim Fathers embark, or the Declaration of Independence signed, or Franklin lasso the lightning, or Warren Hastings tried, or Queen Elizabeth in her triumphal march to Kenilworth, or William, Prince of Orange, land; or Gustavus Adolphus crowned, or Jerome of Prague burned at the stake, or Tamerlane found his empire? Gone! Gone!

But the trumpet shall sound. Music to raise the dead. Oh, how much the world needs it. You take a torch, and I will take a torch, and we will go through some of the aisles of the Roman catacombs and see the expectant epitaphs on the walls and right over where the departed sleep. You know that these catacombs are fifty or sixty feet underground, and if one loses the guide or his torch is extinguished, he never finds the way out. So let us stay close together, and with our torches, as we wander along a small part of these nine hundred miles of underground passages, see the inscriptions as they were really chiseled there on both sides the way. On your side you read by the light of your torch: ’93Here rests a handmaid of God, who out of all her riches now possesses but this one house. Thou wilt remain in eternal repose of happiness. A.D. 380.’94 On my side I read by the light of the torch: ’93Aurelia, our sweetest daughter; she lived fifteen years and four months. A.D. 325.’94 On your side you read: ’93Here hath been laid a sweet spirit, guileless, wise, and beautiful. Buried in peace. A.D. 388.’94 On my side I read: ’93You well-deserving one, lie in peace. You will rise. A temporary rest is granted you. Plaucus, her husband, made this.’94 On your side you read: ’93Nicephorus, a sweet soul, in the place of refreshment.’94 On my side I read: ’93In Christ, Alexander is not dead, but lives beyond the stars, and his dead body rests in this tomb.’94 On your side you read: ’93Here, happy, you find rest bowed down with years.’94 ’93Irene sleeps in God.’94 ’93Valeria sleeps in peace.’94 ’93Arethusa sleeps in God.’94 ’93Navira in peace, a sweet soul who lived sixteen years, a soul sweet as honey; this epitaph was made by her parents.’94

But let us come out from these catacombs and extinguish our torches, for upon all these longings and expectations of all nations the morning of resurrection dawns. The trumpet shall sound! And the sooner it sounds, the better. Oh, how we would like to get our loved ones back again! If we are ready to meet our Lord, our sins all pardoned, what a good thing if this moment we could hear the resounding and reverberating blast! Would you not like to see your father again, your mother again, your daughter again, your boy again, and all your departed kindred again? Roll on, sweet day of resurrection and reunion! Under the hoofs of the white steeds that draw thy chariot we strew Easter flowers. Would it not be grand if we could all rise together?

You know that the Bible says we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. What if we should be among the favored ones who never have to see death, and that while in the full life of our body we should hear that trumpet sound and these mortal bodies take on immortality! Oh, how I would hasten to two places before the close of such a day’97peaceful Greenwood and the village cemetery back of Somerville. And I would cry aloud: ’93The hour has come, the trumpet has sounded, the resurrection is here. Father and mother, you were the best of all the group, now lead the way!’94 The earth sinks out of sight. Clouds under foot. Other worlds only milestones on the King’92s highway. We rise! We rise! We rise! to be forever with the Lord, and forever with each other. May we all have part in that first resurrection!

In this dark world of sin and pain,

We only meet to part again;

But when we reach the heavenly shore,

We there shall meet to part no more.

The hope that we shall see that day

Should chase our present griefs away.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage