Page 24
History of Orange County
Towns of Goshen, Hamptonburgh and Chester
Page 24
     Hapless he falls by wounds which the cruel foe inflicted looks to heaven for aid, and dying remembers his sweet native place. What horrors surround such a death!  How ungrateful that they should be thus suffered to perish for want of aid!  For forty-three years, too, their bones were suffered to whiten among the rocks of the mountain, alter their flesh had been devoured by wild beasts, and of some perhaps before they were dead.  It was not that widows, of whom there were thirty-three in the Presbyterian congregation, were regardless of the remains of their husbands, who were dear to them as their own lives; for they engaged and paid a man to conduct them to the fatal wood of slaughter, where they intended to collect and bury them.  They set out on horseback, hut had not proceeded far before they were forced to return.  How could females ride over the rugged and pathless mountains?  The man went on, promising to perform the duty which they had piously attempted, but he violated his promise and never returned to tell them that he had done so.  But in the county it had long been known that the bones of these heroes were thus ungratefully neglected.  Were their sufferings, their agonies, their deaths, for the protection of their wives, their children, their country forgotten?  This day we mourn their death and acknowledge our ingratitude.  0' ye spirits of the brave who fell in defence of our liberty, our land, too long have we neglected your remains, too long have we been ungrateful, we acknowledge.  But oh! my voice cannot reach you; you cannot hear me; I ought not thus to address you.  The living my voice can reach: you will permit me to address the noble sentiments of your souls, and invite you to emulate the example of these heroes in deeds of noble daring, should your country ever call.  The young and those now around me under arms, nay see our country involved in dangers, that will require even the sacrifice of life for her safety.
     But you will suffer me to remind you, that in order to sacrifice life rationally, though in our country's righteous cause, requires more than what is called patriotism and heroism.  To meet death boldly, in any cause, while the soul is in its natural enmity against Heaven, is no better than the rashness of a madman; it is rushing upon misery unutterable and eternal, from some blind impulse of the light applause of an hour.  It is only by faith in Jesus Christ who died for the salvation of sinners, that any human being can face death calmly, collectedly and rationally.  Who can tell what consolations religion may have ministered to those who expired in the long agonies of death, after the battle of Minisink, without any human aid?  None other could have done.  Great as their bodily pains must have been,  future prospects may have imparted much alleviation.  How intense would their anguish have been, had the prospects beyond the hour of death been only dark and alarming.
     But, fellow citizens, though you should never be called to expose your lives in the field of battle, though you should continue to the close of life amidst scenes of peace, in the bosoms of your families, and die having your cheeks bathed with the sympathetic tears of the most affectionate, the most tender hearted relatives, and my hope and prayer is, that you may enjoy all these, yet they are poor and frigid consolations for a dying man, if he has none other.  Whether, then, Heaven has destined your country to peace or war in your days, it is wise to be prepared for death, by applying in time to the atoning blood of the Son of God for redemption, and the sanctification and consolation of the Eternal Spirit, to carry you in triumphs, (may I say) more than real, through death-yes, through death, “for it is appointed unto all men once to die.”  In a few years these thousands who now stand around us, shall all sink into the earth on which you stand; the clods of the valley shall cover you and not one be left alive.  Whilst this day it is your duty to show by your gravity, your sobriety, your temperance and your decorum, that you remember with sympathetic emotions of sorrow the fall of the excellent citizens whose bones you now inter-remember yourselves.
     You knew that when you die your souls survive, and that your bodies too shall live again.  These dry bones can live, they will live again, they await, and your remains soon to follow to the tomb, shall await there the call of that Creator who formed the soul and the body to appear before the judgment seat of Christ.  While we look back to their death, let us also look forward to our own and to their resurrection on that day “for which all other days were made.”   It is hastening: we must witness its awful solemnities, not like those of this day.  It will not be ushered in by the sound of such artillery as you have to-day heard; but the trump of God, the Archangel, reaching the depths of the ocean and the solemn silence of the grave, whose tenants shall all start into life, raised by the omnipotent energies that shall descend in the voice of the trumpet.  Then shall
“Eruptions, earthquakes, comets, lightnings play
 Their various engines; all at once disgorge
Their blazing magazines.”
     You shall not then, as to day, be called on to attend the interment of a few bones, but to wait on the funeral of the material universe-the interment of the World we inhabit-the interment of her attendant moon-the interment of yonder sun now shining gloriously in mid heaven and the interment of every star that burns by night in the blue vault of heaven.  Secured in the favor of the Almighty Creator, by the Redeemer of man, may we all be prepared for waiting upon the funeral obsequies of earth and the heavens in peace and safety.