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8 THE PRESBYTERIA
Contributed
RESURRECTION DAWN.
O fading stars of resurrection day!
O purpling East, with tender flush of morn!
Had ye no quick, no prescient thrill of power
To guess the drama ye should look upon?
O little olive leaf and warbling thrush,
And tiny pebble by the tomb's sealed door,
8id ye not listen in the dawn's sad hush
For the issuing of the conqueror?
On, tell us how He gazed on temple dome,
And swept Ills glance along the sacred way,
And o'er the treetops of Gethsemane,
Fixing a long look on pale Calvary!
Saw ye the cruel gashes in His hands,
And tender tlcsh torn by the scourge and thorn?
Saw ye the impetuous glance of victory,
The gaze of conqueror that met the morn?
O gieaming East! You blushed to see the shame
That sin had wrought in body of the Lord.
O western winds' You sighed and kissed the wounls
Riven by hatred of the Son of God!
O bird and breeze! O stone and purpling cloud!
Did ye not hear, as those with hated breath
The hollow echoes of the empty tomb,
The moaning of the vanquished spectre, Death?
While from the mystic deeps of ages past,
Fai flash once more eternal splendors bright,
And, marshaied by the scepter of the Christ,
Immortal Life and Beauty spring to Light!
Mary Jasper Willis.
Fayetieville, Ark.
GIRARDEAU'S "LAST JUDGMENT."
1858?1908.
Hampden C. DuBose, D. D., Soochow.
On the retreat from Richmond, April, 1865, beside the
decimated battalions of a noble army, Chaplains James
McDowell and J. L. Girardeau were riding along together,
when they alighted and sat beside the road
conversing on the stern realities of the gloomy situation.
"The Federals are coming," sounded along the
lines.
The former rode forward and joined his brigade, but
in fifteen minutes the latter, failing to escape, was
captured and on his way to Johnson's Island. He re
turnea irom prison aoout the hrst of July to his family,
who had found a secure refuge in "the backwoods" of
Darlington county, South Carolina.
One of his fellow-captives, Captain W. E. James,
who was a member of his theological class in the island
fortress, soon arranged for him to hold ten days' services
in the Darlinp-tnn ehnrrh
Veterans from all over the district, with their wives
and daughters, gathered to hear the Gospel chieftain.
On Sunday morning to an immense audience he
preached on the Judgment Day. The vast galleries
were packed, and just in front of me stood a young
man of noble birth, but deaf and dumb. He remained
motionless during the hour, as in astonishment, and
with fixed gaze he beheld the face of the eloquent
N OF THE SOUTH. April 21, 1909. 1
crator, now pale with fear, then flushed with emotion,
at one time beaming with tenderness, and at another
transfigured before the congregation. He listened as I
only the deaf can, through the portals of the eye, to
the sweet notes of welcome, "Come ye blessed," uttered
by Zion's Judge, to the thundering hallelujahs
of the host ascending to the sky, or to the deep moans
of the lost descending to the pit, as these scenes were
depicted by the shifting lights and shadows on the
face of this prince of preachers. It was the grandest
tribute paid to sacred eloquence that it has ever been
my lot to behold.
Soon Mr. Girardeau returned to Charleston, invited
by the scattered > remnants of the white Presbyterian
congregations, lie was met at the depot by his colored
members, who desired to bear him on their shoulders
through the streets and could scarcely be restrained
in their superabounding enthusiasm. In a
foot-note the Editor of the volume of his sermons, published
by .The State Company, says, "There is nothing
in the manuscript of Dr. Girardeau to show when this
sermon was prepared." Either at the time above mentioned
or during my seminary course I heard some
minister remark that Dr. G. said he "wrote it in 1858
and had never altered the manuscript."
Here, a half century having passed, a lad, who was in
the gallery of his old home church, and heard that sermon
the July after the sword was returned to its scabbard,
sits July of 1908, now no longer young, in his
Llunese study translating this same sermon into the
ianguagc of Sinim, to form, with Biblical material already
prepared, the 48th chapter in his "Christian
Theology."
If now and then he paused in his pleasant, though
difficult, task and retired from where he was dictating
to his writer to allow the unhidden tear to fall, and the
thought arose, "Why should a man die who could
preach like this?" the re<;r\nnsp frr?m u:~
f ? ? w*?l HIV VIV J7HI^ U1 I 1 1>
soul would be: He is not dead, but speaketh in the
tongue of earth's ancient nation, for whose evangelization
he so earnestly and frequently pleaded in the
pulpits of the Southland.
These lines were written last summer, but not forwarded.
Recently Dr. T. H. Law in his appreciative
review of the sermons, puts the date of this one a little
earlier.
FROM MY CORNER.
1 was at a burial service a few days ago. It was
conducted by a Primitive Baptist preacher and on
Primitive Baptist lines. He was dressed in a mixed
suit of brown and gray, had long hair smoothly brushed.
He used old hymns, with old tunes I haven't heard since
boyhood, lining out two lines at a time.
nis talk was rather a surprise for its appropriateness
and force. He put special stress on the resurrection as
a ground of comfort. There was nothing new in it all,
but I thought to myself, Well here I've been feeling as
if these brethren were all ignorant and wrong, and behold
they are comforting themselves with the same old
blessed truths. He has not studied many books, but
he knows the Bible and gets at its rich provision for
flio cr*n 1
After the service I was talking with one of these breth