glory and joy in those who receive their bodies, not from the sheltering grave, but from the sea, and from the very frame of nature, into which their bodily organization will, in one way and another, have been incorporated.  O the unspeakable wonders and raptures connected with the resurrection, both as it relates to our own experience, and to the illustrations which the resurrection will afford, of the divine wisdom and power.  No wonder, we say, that Paul esteemed it the height of Christian privilege, that he, as a redeemed human being, “might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

It is an innocent fancy, if it be not worthy of a better name, that the great attention which has been given of late years to new cemeteries, now in such contrast to the old graveyards, whose reckless disorder so perfectly expressed abandonment to sorrow and unresisting surrender to the last enemy, is a symptomatic token of growing faith in the great, general heart of the Christianized part of the race, with regard to that consummation of all things, the resurrection of the dead.

As at sea there is, within certain degrees of latitude and longitude, an uphill and a downhill, made by the convexity of the globe, we, perhaps, may have reached the meridian of the great voyage, and may have begun to feel the inclination which will set us forward more swiftly to the end.  The power of the great consummation will be waxing stronger and stronger.  Men are looking to the cemeteries as places where great treasures went down, or were abandoned, and they begin to think that some great restoration awaits them.  These costly and beautiful cemeteries, which men are preparing, are like Hiram’s contributions to the building of the temple; they foretell some great thing; they have a look not only of expectation, but of design, not merely of faith, but of hope.  With a truly liberal regard to the decoration of those burial places with costly works of general interest, in the department of art, we shall do well to make provision, by statute, for the perpetual repair and preservation of every enclosure, and every grave, the whole body corporate thus pledging itself, as far as possible, to each incumbent, that his last resting place shall be the care of the perpetuated fraternity to the end of time.

And when the prophecies are accomplished, and the stone cut out of the mountain without hands has filled the earth, and the apostasy which is to follow the general prevalence of religion, has deluged the world with blood, and Satan, loosed a little season, is triumphing in his maddened career, and the graves are full, and the souls under the altar, with their importunate cry, can no longer wait for the avenging arm,—­then shall be seen the sign of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.

As we commit a Christian friend to the earth, and as we visit his resting place, let us think that now, the anticipation of the rising from the dead is, to him, the great object of personal expectation and hope.  The time is not far distant, when, in heaven, we, in like manner, shall be filled with that expectation, as we look down upon the places where our bodies await the signal of the resurrection.