Benjamin F. Taylor - 1878-1987

December/14/2009 12:05 Filed in: Recent Finds
I was doing research on the men who spoke on the Annual Bible Lectureship at Freed-Hardeman College. I have memorials for 31 speakers posted at www.findagrave.com. I came across a speaker named Ben Taylor who spoke at the FHC lectures in January 1942. After some research I found a wealth of information about this gospel preacher who lived for almost 109 years. What touched me most were his writings and poems. For those of us who would rather visit a cemetery more than anything else, I think we can identify with what he wrote in 1955 after a visit to the cemetery.

A PICTURE IN A TOMBSTONE

Alone I wandered through the village church yard and looked upon row after row of ancient stones. The destructive hand of time has made much of the carving unreadable. Gravestones are like the clothes we wear and the houses we build. They change their shapes and styles with the change of generations. Hence I could well trace the boundaries of the first Silent City, and too, I could trace additional areas added as death made its grim demands. Now the population of this well kept green-sward is far greater than those living in the village.

That day I wandered alone. I had been there many times before, but not alone. I had been there again and again amid flowers when subdued sobs could be heard and staining tears could be seen; when caskets were lowered and graves were filled; when companions went home alone; when children went away orphans and when parenthood suffered the bitter toll of humanity. These solemn adieus leave scars on human hearts.

I left the original Platt to visit silently among the dust of those of my own generation and the generation before me. I walked slowly and stepped softly upon the green sod, pausing oft to read a name and dates, then to carefully remove the dust of the years from picture after picture in memory's gallery. I could not, neither did I try, resist silent meditation. These had lived and our lives had touched. Our mutual love for Christ; our mutual interest in the simplicity that is in Christ; our mutual devotion in worship linked our hearts in edifying fellowship and we enjoyed the nectar of brotherly love. These have met the challenge of life and have gone the way of all the earth. These have gone, we trust, into a brighter clime where the spirits of just men are made perfect. My heart was filled with happy anticipation of the reunion of the redeemed in Christ.

Again I was to pass through the area of pioneer dust. I stood silently before the grave of Bro JL Martin, a southern Indiana pioneer preacher, well known and much beloved. They made his grave while the spring flowers were blooming in 1871. No one now lives who wept at his casket.

I was attracted by and to a lone grave stone protected from all intruders by a fence of iron leaded in stone. This grave stone marks the resting place of a girl who closed her eyes when but thirteen years of age. They hollowed her bed of clay in the trying days of 1862. It was not the name, nor the age, neither the date of the year that held me spellbound for a moment. Above the name is a well carved niche in which Elizabeth's picture is sealed. After ninety and more years of heat and cold; of rain and sleet; of night and day, I looked upon the likeness of a fair maiden. Her dust has not felt the cold touch of kindred ashes. Elizabeth sleeps alone. How very dearly she must have been loved at home for parenthood to do all within their power to protect and to keep alive the memory of their daughter. Her parents' generation and that of her own have felt the chilly waters of that Jordan which have unceasingly flowed from Abel across the generations of Adam's race and shall continue until time shall be no more. No visitors come to her grave except, perchance some stranger, as I, stop a moment out of curiosity.

It may be that now and then a bird finds perch on the cold iron fence and warbles a song of cheer or some trailing arbutus creeps in to blossom an assurance of the coming resurrection. Such is the fate of humanity. We live, we endeavor, we sleep and new generations know us not. Let us turn from memories of the pleasurable past; from thoughts of tears and farewells; to that future day when death shall be vanquished; when mortality shall be swallowed up of life; when the grave shall present it's harvest. In that day the bodies of the redeemed in Christ shall be replicas of His own glorious body. All of the redeemed in Christ shall be crowned and all tongues will be tuned to sing of Moses and of the Lamb. What unspeakable riches await the Redeemed in Christ.

Ben F Taylor

Martinsburg Cemetery

Here is a link to Ben Taylor's memorial on www.findagrave.com.

Here is a link to J. L. Martin's grave at www.findagrave.com.