When the Philistines came down on the field, they stepped between the corpses, and they rolled over the dead, and they took away everything that was valuable; and so it was with the people that followed after our army at Chancellorsville, and at Pittsburg Landing, and at Stone River, and at Atlanta, stripping the slain; but the Northern and Southern women—­God bless them!—­came on the field with basins, and pads, and towels, and lint, and cordials, and Christian encouragement; and the poor fellows that lay there lifted up their arms and said:  “Oh, how good that does feel since you dressed it!” and others looked up and said:  “Oh, how you make me think of my mother!” and others said:  “Tell the folks at home I died thinking about them;” and another looked up and said:  “Miss, won’t you sing me a verse of ’Home, Sweet Home,’ before I die?” And then the tattoo was sounded, and the hats were off, and the service was read:  “I am the resurrection and the life;” and in honor of the departed the muskets were loaded, and the command given:  “Take aim—­fire!” And there was a shingle set up at the head of the grave, with the epitaph of “Lieutenant ——­ in the Fourteenth Massachusetts Regulars,” or “Captain ——­ in the Fifteenth Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers.”  And so to-night, across this great field of moral and spiritual battle, the angels of God come walking among the slain, and there are voices of comfort, and voices of hope, and voices of resurrection, and voices of heaven.

Christ is ready to give life to the dead.  He will make the deaf ear to hear, the blind eye to see, the pulseless heart to beat, and the damp walls of your spiritual charnel-house will crash into ruin at His cry:  “Come forth!” I verily believe there are souls in this house who are now dead in sin, who in half an hour will be alive forever.  There was a thrilling dream, a glorious dream—­you may have heard of it.  Ezekiel closed his eyes, and he saw two mountains, and a valley between the mountains.  That valley looked as though there had been a great battle there, and a whole army had been slain, and they had been unburied; and the heat of the land, and the vultures coming there, soon the bones were exposed to the sun, and they looked like thousands of snow-drifts all through the valley.  Frightful spectacle!  The bleaching skeletons of a host!

But Ezekiel still kept his eyes shut; and lo! there were four currents of wind that struck the battle-field, and when those four currents of wind met, the bones began to rattle; and the foot came to the ankle, and the hand came to the wrist, and the jaws clashed together, and the spinal column gathered up the ganglions and the nervous fiber, and all the valley wriggled and writhed, and throbbed, and rocked, and rose up.  There, a man coming to life.  There, a hundred men.  There, a thousand; and all falling into line, waiting for the shout of their commander.  Ten thousand bleached skeletons springing up into ten thousand warriors, panting for the fray.  I hope that instead of being a dream it may be a prophecy of what we shall see here to-day.  Let this north wall be one of the mountains, and the south wall be taken for another of the mountains, and let all the aisles and the pews be the valley between, for there are thousands here to-day without one pulsation of spiritual life.