SERVICE OF COMMEMORATION
Choral Response
Where loyal hearts and true
Stand ever in the light,
All rapture through and through,
In God's most holy sight. Amen.
Assembly
We need not go to Mecca or to Palestine to find the Holy Land.
The soul of man can transfigure earth and make it holy ground.
Sacred are the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane;
Sacred the field of Thermopylae and the Town Common at Lexington;
Sacred are Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill.
All are sacred because they bear the stamp of man's immortal soul. James Freeman Clark
II. MAKING DEATH SIGNIFICANT
Hymn No. 9 Abide with Me
I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless:
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.
Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes,
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me. Amen. (Seated)
Leader:
'Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure that life gives us.'
For all the boundless universe
Is life there are no dead. Bulwer Lytton
We make too much of the circumstances men call death.
All life is one. All service one, be it here or there. Alice Freeman Palmer
The whole race reaches new heights in the breast of some simple hearted soldier, who so loves life that he has much to give, but so loves his country and his cause that he freely gives it all. Ralph Barton Perry
To die for truth is not to die for one's country, but to die for the world. Jean Paul Richter
That no one who has died for a great cause is ever wasted, that the only right expression of grief is a fresh self-dedication to the cause the loved one loved, is an attitude toward loss that may well pass from the army of warriors to that greater army of civilians. Winifred Kirkiand
Hymn No. 183 For All the Saints
Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might;
Thou, Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true light.
Alleluia.
O May thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia. Amen.
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