The Reunion

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 29, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 29.

FROM all of the accounts that have reached us, the reunion of the Federal and Confederate veterans at Gettysburg was a successful one, in which there was no evidence of war other than the battle-torn flags and the relics of the great struggle, and the few aged men who were survivors of the conflict. It certainly was worthy of note that there could come together with such good spirit the survivors of a war which was so bloody. We firmly believe that it could have been brought about twenty-five years ago if it had not been for political agitators. The old soldiers in the conflict do not seem to hold the grudges that those outside of the conflict have held. Everything was done for the aged men to protect their life and health. One wishes that the words of the beautiful poem might be true,—

“No more shall a war-cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red; Our anger is banished forever When are buried the graves of our dead: Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment-day; Love and tears for the blue, Tears and love for the gray.”

BUT that time will not come until that far greater reunion shall take place, when the soldiers not of any “lost cause” or “won cause” of earth come home, but when the soldiers of Christ Jesus the King shall come home with rejoicing, to shout eternal triumph,—whose conflicts waged to the end have always been victorious, tho meeting with seeming defeat, and whose heroes, even tho they tunnel the grave, shall come from all lands and climes and generations and ages, to take part in the glorious reunion at His eternal coronation. Great as have been many of the warfares of earth, greater still is the conflict which every man wages with sin; glorious as have been the victories won on worldly battle-fields, eternally glorious is the victory won over sin. It is the wish of the writer that every member of the Signs family may engage in that glorious warfare, and in it may win the everlasting victory with his King Christ Jesus.