The Religious Herald

From the Presbyterian Banner.

THE BURIAL PLACE OF JACOB.

It appears from the history, that in ancient times a place was chosen by the living, for his body to occupy when deserted by the spirit. With most persons the same practice prevails in our own time.—Perhaps there is more apparent anxiety for a spot in which the clayey tenement may return to its original "dust," than for that "place" which the Saviour went to prepare" for his followers—a joyous glorious, enduring place for the redeemed soul.

The catacombs of most ancient nations of note are, to the present, the storehouses of the crumbling bones of their "uncounted mighty dead."

Asia Minor and the northern coast of Africa present many remarkable, interesting and immense works of this kind. The wonderful labyrinths and pyramids of Egypt; the marble sarcophagi and mausoleums of old Rome; the hollowed rocks and gigantic magazines of the Phœnicians and Greeks. are enduring testimonials of the great regard paid to a place of "this mortal coil."

"And the time drew nigh that Israel must die: and he called his son Joseph. and said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee in Egypt: but I will lie with my fathers. and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah. which is before Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite. for a possession of a burying place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife: there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife: and there I buried Leah. And he said, Swear unto me: and he sware unto him. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons. he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people."

The grey haired patriarch bowed him on his bed:
Had he bright visions of a world of glory;
Or was the vista dim. whose passage led
To that far land portrayed in christian story ?
Did the rapt scenes of boyhood float before him:
And did the hills and vales his feet had trod
In youth, and that blue sky that bended o'er him.
Draw his heart towards that consecrated sod ?
Did his soul yearn for that most beauteous land.
Where the blest angels met him in his dreaming:
And would he mount that ladder which could stand
And reach to heaven—so eloquent of meaning?

There was the pillared pillow raised to tell
The spot the great I Am had rendered holy—
Where He had said. "with thee it shall be well,
And in thy seed I'll bless the nations wholly."
Aye! more than these were busy with his thoughts:
The undying love which for his kin he cherished;
From the last throbbing of his heart was naught
More pure, enduring-'mong the last that perished.

In that old "cave"—the venerated spot—
His sire and grand-sire, and their spouses rested;
And there would he be left,-and if forgot,—
Beside the wife whose love a life had tested.

Sacramento, June, '53
Eugene.