Wife Mary Gregg
Birth August 16, 1812
Death September 6, 1879
Burial Buckhorn Waterford Cemetery, Buckhorn, Iowa
Father Gregg is Dead.
By request we publish the sermon delivered by Rev. I.H. Elliot at the funeral of Mr. James
Gregg at the M.E. Church in Manning last Thursday. The Reverend gentlemen chose for his
text the 19th and 20th verses of the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians. "If in this life only we
have hope we are of all men most miserable." Before following up the text Mr. Elliot read the following obituary;
James Gregg was born in the State of Kentucky on the 9th day of February 1813, making him 73 years 2 months and 21 days old. He moved to the State of Iowa about 1846, where he has lived ever since. He has always been an upright and moral man and was beloved by all who knew him. November last he gave his heart to God. Soon after was taken to his bed with a paralytic stroke of his right side. It has been my privilege a number of times to visit him in his affliction and talk with him on the subject of dying and he always expressed himself as being ready for the Master's call. We had many sweet seasons of prayer together and he has left no doubt in our minds that he has gone to be with Christ: The word miserable in the text means to be pitied. 1st The Christian hope of all men Christians entertained the highest hope, and if deceived they would be doomed to the bitterest disappointment, the hope of Christians is the meeting with their leader, their Captain, at the close of life. The life of St. Paul is an illustration. He was called to the ministry of the Christian church, and had renounced everything to fill it. He had renounced Wealth, fame and home to serve his Master; had endured poverty, scorn, scourging, stoning and persecution for the hope of seeing his Savior at the end of the Christian race. You all know the life of St. Paul, his perils among false brethren and among countryman. His was not only a life of peril but a life of success. We may ask, Oh Paul, how could you leave such a life as was before you to take up such a life as you did? and he answers the love of Christ constrained me in the time of shipwreck, in traversing islands, seas and continents; that love sustained him and in spite of perils of all kinds made him able to defend a kingdom more enduring than Alexander's and one that lives long after the might of Greece and Rome has crumbled into nothing. The resurrection of Christ is the supreme fact on which the Christian hope is based. It proved the claims of Christ to be the redeemer of men. There, St. Paul's statement is true: If Christ be not risen your faith is vain you are yet in your sins. Our hope is based on a risen Savior. Without that it has no meaning. For if in this life only we have hope in Christ then we are to be pitied. For if Christ be not risen he was an impostor and his power was all spent while he was here on earth and does not sit upon his throne to make intercession for us. So our preaching is all in vain we are all of us yet in our sins and without any hope of meeting him; without any hope of meeting any one of our friends that have gone before us if so be Christ be not risen. If Christ be not risen this one that now lies so helpless before us, when we or his friends take their last look upon the form as it now lies cold and helpless, that is all and the last we may ever expect to see of the one that has loved you and cherished you and thus truly you that mourn are to be pitied. But no; it is not all of death to die; it is only a change; only an exchange of an old garment for a new one. If so be that our hope is in Christ and we take him as our example.
The resurrection of Christ fills out and presents in a concrete, practical form all the arguments for immortality drawn from the instincts of the race; the hopes of men in their best moods; the analogies of nature in its spring time; and makes the future life not simply a possibility, not a theory, but a glorious and inspiring certainty. Which of us can tell on whose forehead in this assembly the messenger of death has already set his mark as the next on whom he will call? Who knows how near death may be, and who would not desire to be ready let it be near at hand or many years hence. Let us then friends, learn the secret of it the sooner we learn it the better for we have no lease of our lives.
We may learn it from the many that have left their testimony the grace of God
sustained them even in their dying hour. We may learn it from the dying thief who passed
out into eternity listening to the consoling words, "Today shalt thou be with me in
paradise." What does it profit a man if he learns everything save this one secret of a
happy death or what will it profit a man if he learns how-he might gain the whole world and
lose his own soul? This a question that we should all carefully consider and not allow
ourselves to be led astray by the things that pertain to this life but should seek for that will
sustain us in the trying hour of death. Think of the scenes of glory that passed before the
enraptured gaze of John the Revelator. See that gorgeous city, with its gates of pearl, its
twelve foundations, its streets of gold, its river and its trees of life. Do you see that joyful
company in white robes? See those crowns of life adorning every brow. Mark how with
harp and voice they pour forth their songs of everlasting joy unto God and the Lamb. Your
departed kindred are there. Your loved one is one of that joyful and immortal number. The
poet speaks of them thus:
Oh their Crowns how bright they sparkle,
Such as monarchs never wear;
They are gone to richer pastures,
Jesus is their shepherd there.
Hail, ye happy, happy spirits,
Death no more shall make you fear
Grief nor sorrow pain nor anguish,
Shall no more follow you there.
We should all of us be able now to read our title clear to that mansion that Christ has gone to prepare for each and every one of us and to wipe away every tear from our eyes. The land of darkness and tears and, the gates of death are passed. Your loved one has entered heaven. Then weep no more till you, too, shall go, when all tears are wiped away. We may expect if Christians to meet and know our kindred in the land beyond the grave. We are not to know less but more hereafter. Now we know in part but then that which is perfect will have come. This is our childhood; that shall be our mature life, when we shall have put away childish things. Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face and knowing as we are known. Abraham and Lazarus knew each other. Moses and Elias are Moses and Elias still. The Immortal whom John saw - Rev. 22: 8-9 - introduced himself as a fellow servant "and" of his brethren the prophets; and the Jews are to see and know Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God. It cannot be that the saved shall not know each other in that heavenly land. Such a thought would detract indescribably from the bliss of that state. A stranger in heaven - the past all forgotten - father, mother, wife, children and other kindred here but I can never know them! I promised to meet some of therein heaven -they are here - I am here, I may have met them; sang with them; shouted with them; harped with them; walked the streets of the city and the sea of glass with them; bowed before the everlasting throne with them; but I do not, cannot know them. Earth was the grave of friendship - I can greet those I knew and loved on earth no more forever. Ah, no. Heart stricken ones, no such lamentation will ever be heard beyond the grave. Heaven is a land of purest social bliss, peopled with bright circles of deathless friends. We shall know each other in heaven. How joyful the thought of such a meeting! How blissful the prospect of such a Heaven! How we love to dwell upon the tender theme of reunion with the loved ones in the regions of eternal life! We stand and gaze across the river of death; we believe, yes, our hopes reach beyond this life, and with an eye of faith we can look across the river and. see Christ. with all our loved ones watching and waiting for us. But someone asks - Shall I know my friends in heaven? I can tell it in no truer words than the poet has said it.
Ah, ye weary ones and sad ones,
Droop not, faint not by the way:
Ye shall join the loved and lost ones
in the land of perfect day;
Harp strings touched by Angel fingers,
Murmur in my raptured ear,
Evermore their sweet tones linger,
We shall know earl ether there.
When we hear the music ringing,
Through the bright celestial dome,
When sweet angel voices singing,
Gladly bid us welcome home,
To the laud of ancient story,
Where the spirit knows no care;
In time land of light and a glory,
Shall we know each other there!
When the holy angels reset us,
As we go to join their band,
Shall we know the friends that greet us
In the glorious spirit land?
Shall we see their bright eyes shining
On us, as in days of yore;
Shall we feel their dear arms
Fondly around us as before?
Yes; my earth-worn soul rejoices.
And lily weary heart grows light,
For the thrilling Angels voices,
And the Angel faces bright,
What shall welcome me in heaven,
Are the loved of long ago.
And to them 'tis kindly given,
Thus their mortal friends to known.
Thus does the hope of another life after death become a solace to the wounded and bereft spirit a balm for the aching and bleeding heart. Oh, may all who weep on earth lay hold of this hope which gives divine consolations and weep no more. Death to the righteous is but the dawning of an eternal day. Not till then does he enter upon a life not trammeled by corruption. He ascends to be with Christ, which is far better. Then farewell, earth, farewell toil and pain and tears and death. Gone to join the immortal company of heaven who sing and shine in the presence of God for ever. In that better land there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away. There the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are forever at rest. There the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall lead us to the fountains of living water and God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. In view of such a consummation of what account are our earthly sufferings? Are they worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed? Should we not rather bless God for every pang we feel knowing that our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory? Friends, do your hearts glow with this glorious hope of joy immortal beyond the grave? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy path begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefied and that fadeth not away. May neither death nor life nor angles nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature ever separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. May this good hope through grace be our solace and strength through life, our support and consolation in death, and only cease to shine and glow within us when mortality is swallowed up in life.
Cry out and shout ye inhabitants of Zion, ye heirs of glory,
on the way to these heavenly mansions, while, from earth you may respond
"Sing on ye heavenly hosts, sing on." By faith we hear your melodies;
we see your shining robes and sparkling crown; we are treading the narrow way
you trod; we are fighting the good fight of faith and expect to overcome by the
blood of the lamb and to meet you are long in Heaven.
April 7, 1887, Manning Monitor