Halton’s Mausoleum

En-route to visit a former Sunday School teacher of mine who was in hospital, I called at Halton Church near Lancaster this month. To its rear is a rather grand mausoleum built for the Bradshaw family of Halton Hall back in 1770. It is constructed in a fashionable, classical style, yet one cannot escape the aura of decay and degeneracy which attends it. Cheap, metal railings keep out the curious (though not the local youths, I daresay), while ivy and weeds find homes in the crumbling masonry. Whatever the quality of the grave clothes, the mahogany of the coffin and the marble of the tomb, they too, like the corpse within them, shall decay and deteriorate. Only the Conqueror of death and the grave could enter them and emerge as lively and animated as when He went in. Death without Christ is a chilling prospect, a dreadful silence; death with Him and in Him is the greatest pleasure and most beautiful reunion.

But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, For He shall receive me. Selah Psalm 49:15, NKJV