Memorial Service at Richmond
363
a most unpopular work, and she responded. He has used her mightily.
She has truly been a mother in Israel.
“Our blessed Lord voiced the calmest judgment of the human heart
when He said that a tree is known by its fruits. In the light of this, the
life of our sister, and its blessed influence upon all whose lives it has
touched, are a witness of her character and work. She ‘being dead yet
speaketh.’”
For the discourse that followed the reading of the biographical
sketch, Elder E. E. Andross chose as his text the words: “Blessed are
the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit,
that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.”
“Of no one,” the speaker declared, “can it be said more truly than
of our dear sister, that this scripture is fulfilled; still, under circum-
stances such as these, our hearts cry out for the glorious morning of the
resurrection. We want to know that death is to be destroyed, that the
sleepers are to awake. However blessed the life that has gone out, we
want to know that the loved one will rise again to glorious immortality.
And the Lord has not left us to mourn as those who have no hope. ‘I
will ransom them from the power of the grave,’ the prophet writes; ‘I
will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave,
I will be thy destruction.’ Blessed words! ...
[461]
“Again, I read the words of the prophet Isaiah, as recorded in the
twenty-sixth chapter: ‘Thy dead men shall live, together with My dead
body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy
dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.’ Death
is eventually to be destroyed, and the sleepers are to awake....
“So today, my dear brethren, and especially those who mourn most
deeply upon this occasion,—members of the family,—I say to you,
We are not to sorrow as those who have no hope. Our sister, after
seventy years and more of earnest, faithful toil for the Master, has now
lain down to rest in the last sleep; but soon she is to rise again. ‘The
Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice
of the Archangel, and with the trump of God.’ She will hear His voice,
and come forth.... O, let us, like our beloved sister, ‘follow the Lamb
whithersoever He goeth.’ And when, in a little while, our labors are
ended, like the great apostle we may say, We have fought a good fight,
we have finished the course, we have kept the faith.”