An Autumn Hour in Greenwood

JEREMY TAYLOR has quaintly said that it is well for the living to knock often at the gates of the grave. This thought is ever present with me when I thread the walks, and from its many elevations, look down into the embowered and shaded vales of Greenwood. The word “cemetery” signifies a sleeping-place; and Greenwood is simply a vast and exquisitely beautiful dormitory, with two hundred and forty thousand slumberers in their narrow beds. Some rest in rosewood beneath roofs of marble; some are laid in the coarse pine box which scanty poverty hides in the bosom of mother earth. But amid all the miscellaneous multitude, the Master knoweth them that are His; them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.

Yesterday, under a golden October sunshine, I climbed Fountain Hill, and stood amid the fragrant flowers which adorn the bedroom in which my own beloved ones sleep. In that little group lies the beautiful and accomplished daughter, who vanished from the home, of which she was the joy and pride, a twelvemonth ago. Those lips now silent never spoke a disobedient word; the first pang she caused us was when her own noble loving heart ceased to beat. Blessed are such pure hearts, for they shall see God. Never did the spot look more surpassingly lovely, with its immediate canopy of maples tinged with their autumn radiance, and the distant waters of the Bay gilded by the setting sun. The gentle murmurs of the neighboring fountain seemed like a requiem over the slumberers that were lying closely around- Across

the carnage-drive was the arched Gothic tomb in memory of some who sank with the sinking steamer “Arctic” into the ocean depths. Just over on Oak Ridge I could descry the bronze bust of Horace Greeley, with its familiar inscription, “Founder of the New York Tribune.” Several friends beside whose dying beds I had once stood, were lying in their turfcovered beds beside me. And all over the greensward, and through the crimsoning trees, poured the bright rays of the autumnal sun, kindling the flower-plats into a brilliant glow, and making the very atmosphere glorious as with the anticipated light of the better world.

Standing in that august light I said to myself. So He givcth His beloved sleep! Thanks be to Him that He takes away the terrors of death from His own redeemed ones by assuring them that death is only a temporary suspension of bodily activities, while the redeemed and immortal spirit has

“departed to be with Christ, which is far better.” Nor shall the slumber of the mortal frame be more than transient. For at the voice of the archangel’s trump it also shall awake, and be transformed into that “spiritual body” which is organized for the peculiar atmosphere and activities of the heavenly state. Then shall Christ’s ransomed ones, in their normal and complete condition, — body, soul, and spirit, — be forever with their Lord.

I fed my faith by recalling how often God’s Word pictures the act of dying as a falling into sleep. I recalled the expression which our Lord employed over the couch of Jairus’s daughter, and also His memorable words on the road to Bethany, — “Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” When Stephen the martyr had uttered his last testimony, and caught his first glimpse of the celestial spheres, he “fell asleep.” This is the term employed in that magnifi-

cent chapter to the Corinthians on the Resurrection, — a chapter whose single inestimable preciousness is enough to warrant a revelation from heaven. Jesus the Conqueror is there described as “the first fruits” — the earliest harvest-sheaf — “of them that are asleep.” As He awakened His slumbering form on the Easter-morn, so shall He awaken those who sleep in Jesus at the Resurrection dawn.

This beautiful and comforting conception of dying has entered into the experiences of multitudes of believers. When the great church-historian Neander drew near to his last moment, he sweetly said to his faithful sister: “Hannchen, I am weary; let us go home; good-night!” One of the aged veterans of the New York pulpit was heard repeating to himself the simple lines of his childhood, as he was departing: —

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep.”

3o have we parents stood beside our

darlings and watched the soft dews of kindly slumber steeping the tired eyelids, until there was no longer voice nor hearing. The agony would have been insupportable, if that process meant extinction and remorseless annihilation. But the Son of God was ever saying to us, “Not dead, but sleeping: them which sleep in Me, will I bring with Me, that where I am, they shall be also.” Innumerable mothers have stayed up their suffering hearts with this priceless consolation. Somewhere I once met with the following lines, which set forth, touchingly, a mother’s caress of the little form that is growing cold in her arms: —

“Still she keeps rocking him,

Ever caressing him, Brushing his hair from his colorless brow;

Softly they ‘ve whispered her,

* Life has gone out of him; ‘Gently she answers — ’ how still he is now! ’

“Still she keeps rocking him, As though she would shake from him The cold hand of death, like the weights from his eyes; 12 Rocking the clay of him, While softly the soul of him Angels are rocking far up in the skies.**

All these blessed thoughts of the transient sleep and the heavenly waking, came to cheer me yesterday as I stood beside the narrow beds covered with tuberoses and geraniums. The setting sun shed its mellow radiance upon green turf, and marble tablets, and sparkling fountain. In the distance was the placid Bay with a ship or two resting at anchor, — beautiful emblems of a Christian soul whose voyage had ended in the repose of the desired haven. A few birds were twittering their last notes ere they dropped to their perch. The air was as quiet as the dear sleepers beside me, and as I turned from the sacred spot of their slumbers, I bade them as of old ‘^good-night!’ Beyond these nights of earth, and the last night also, gleams the bright everlasting hope of heaven’s “good morning!”