But the great vicegerent of the resurrection was there.  To him the body of a saint is suggestive of the last day; it is a special assignment by Christ, an official trust, to the archangel.  Bodies of saints are, therefore, most precious to him.  Particles of the precious metal are not more precious to the miner, pearls to the diver, ivory to the Coast-merchant, and the shell-fish to the maker of Tyrian purple.  The body of each saint is an unfinished history of redemption; a destiny of indescribable interest and importance belongs to it.  Any subaltern angel may have charge of winds and seas, of day and night, of summer and winter; but only the archangel is counted meet to have charge, and to keep watch and ward, over the bodies of saints as they sleep in Jesus.

“He disputed about the body of Moses.”  It was a dispute characterized on the part of the archangel more by act than word.  Words are hushed in great encounters.  Debate with a pirate, a body-snatcher, would be folly; no arguments, therefore, were wasted, on the top of Nebo, by Michael, over the grave of Moses.  “The Lord rebuke thee,” was his retort; his heavenly form stopping the way, his baffling right arm hindering the accursed design, were the invincible logic of that dispute.

O prince of angels, watchman, herald, master of the guard, at the resurrection of the just,—­comptroller, now, of that treasury which receives and keeps their precious forms,—­from whose lips that signal is to come which millions on millions are to hear, and live,—­what images of glory and terror fill thy mind in the anticipation of that moment when thy dread commission is to be fulfilled!  Is not that “trumpet” sometimes taken into thy hand?  Dost thou not place it to thy lips, but quickly lay it aside, and patiently and joyfully watch the swelling number of the graves of saints?  Funerals of those who fall asleep in Jesus, to thee are pleasant scenes; they are spring-work, planting times, for thy harvest, O chief reaper!  While, with bursting hearts, we turn from the new-made mound, one more glorified body, in anticipation, is added to thy charge.

Smiling at our sorrow, in joyful thought of the change to be witnessed in and around that sepulchre when the family circle shall there put on incorruption, thou canst not pity us except as we pity the brief sorrows of children.  If the devil should approach that spot, to work some unknown, and, to us, inconceivable, harm to that body,—­be it the body of the humblest saint, one of those little ones who believe in Jesus, or of those infants whose angels do always behold the face of God,—­thou, mighty cherub, wouldst be there, and, if need be, with a band of angels, “every one with his sword upon his thigh, because of fear in the night;” and Nebo and its “dispute” would reappear.  Poor, dying, mouldering body! hast thou the archangel himself for thy keeper?  Not only so: 

    “God, my Redeemer, lives,
      And often from the skies
    Looks down and watches all my dust,
      Till he shall bid it rise.”