Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-12-04
adversely. If We had our own wav In life

siohS OF S~elnShneSs and wOrldliness and
disgusting sin, and pulled up until we
would have been like Julius Caesar, who
was made by sycophants to believe that he
was divine, and tho freckles OH his face
were as the stars in the armament. One
OF the swlttest transatlantic voyages made
last summer by the Etruria was because
she had a stormy wind abaft, chasing her
from New York to Liverpool. But to
those going in an opposite direction
the storm wa a buffeting and q hinder
ance. 1t is a bad thing to have a
storm ahead pushing us back, but if
we arc Gods children and aiming toward
heaven, the storms Of life will only chase
us the sooner into the harbor. J. am Sc
glad to believe that the monsoons and tv.
phoons and mistrals and ~siroccos of lane
and sea are not unclaimed maniacs let
loose upon the earth, but under divine SUI
pervislon. l am SO glad that the God OF
the Seven Stars is also the God Of Orion.
1t was out of Dante's suffering came the
sublime "Divina Comedia," and out of
John Millions blindness came aParadise
Lost" and ont of miserable infdel attack
came the Bridgewater treatise in favor Of
Christianity, and out of David's exile came
the songs of consolation, and out of the
sufferings of Christ came the possibility of
the worlds redemption, and out of your
bereavement,y your persecution, your power
ties, your misfortunes may yet come an
eternal heaven.
oh h a mercy it is that in the text and
all up and down the Bible God induces us
to look out toward other worlds! Bible
astronomy in Genesis, in Joshua, in Job,
IN the Psalms, in the prophets,
major and minor, in st. Johns
apocalypse, practically saying:
"Worlds! worlds! worlds! Get ready for
them." We have a nice little world here
That we stick to as though losing we lose
all. We are afraid of falling off this little
raft of a world. We are afraid that some
meteoric iconoclast will some night smash
it, and we want everything to revolve
around it, and we are disappointed when
we find that it revolves around the sun in
stead OF the sun revolving around it. What
a fuss we must make about this little bit of
a world, its existence only q short time be-
tween two spasms, the paroxysmb by which
it was hurled from chaos into order and
the paroxysm Of it's demolition! And 1 am
sou AAtSu ~ many UCAUS CdA uS 10 1UOK OIL
to other worlds, many Of them larger and
costlier and more Respondent. "Look
there" says Job, Sat Mazzaroth and Arct.
urus and his sons!" "Look there" says
st. John, 'at the moon under Christ's feot!,,
"Look there" says Joshua Eat the sun
standing still above Gideon! "Look there"
says Moses, "at the sparkling 1irmament!"
"Look, there" says Amos, the herdsman,
"at the seven stars and Orion" Don't let
us be SO sad about those who shove off
from this world under Christly pilotage.
Don't let us be agitated about our own go
ing off this little barge or sloop or canal
boat of a world to get IN some Great East
ern of the heavens. Don't let us persist
in wanting to stay in this barn, this shed,
this clubhouse of a world when all the
Kings palaces already occupied by many
of our best friends are swinging wide open
their gates to let us in. When I read, Gin
my Fathers house are many mansions," I
do not know but that each world is a rooD!
and as many rooms as there are worlds,
stellar stairs, steller galleries, stellar hall
ways, stellar windows, steller domes. How
our departed friends must pity us, shut up
in these cramped apartments, tired if we
walk fifteen miles, when they some morn
ing, by one stroke of the wing, can make
circuit of the whole stellar system and
be back in time for mathis. Perhaps
yonder t%winkling constellation is the
residence OF the martys, that group
OF twelve luminaries is the celestial
home of the apostles. Perhaps. that steep
of light is the dwelling-place of angels
cherubic, seraphic, ~archangelic. A man.
sion with as many rooms as worlds, and
all their windows Illuminated for festivlty.
Oh, how his widens and lifts and stimu-
lates our expectation! How little it makes
the present n how stupendous it makes
the future! How it consoles us about our
pious dead, that instead Of being boxed up
and under the ground, they nave the range
of as many rooms as there are worlds, and
welcome everywhere, for it is the Fathers
house, in which there are many mansions!
o, Lord God of the Seven Stars and Orion,
how can l endure the transport, the ecstasy
of such a vision! must obey my text and
seek him. I will seek him. I seek him
now, for I call to mind that it is not the
material universe that is most valuable,
but the spiritual, and that each Of US has
a soul worth more han all the worlds
which the inspired herdsman saw from his
booth on the hills of Tekoa. I had stud
led it before, but the Cathc-
dral of Cologne, Germany, never i'm
pressed me as it did this summer. 1t is adj
mittedly the grandest Gothic structure in
the world, it foundations laid in 124s, only
two or three years ago completed. More
than 600 years in building. All Europe
taxed for it's construction. Its chapel of
the Magi with precious stones enough to
purchase q kingdom. Its chapel of st.
Agnes with masterpieces Of painting. Its
spire %springing 511 feet into the heavens.
Its stained glass the chorus of all rich
colors. Statues encircling the pillars and
encircling all. Statues above statues until
sculpture can 10 no more, but faints and
falls back against carved stalls and down
on pavements over which the kings and
queens of the earth have walked to confess
sion. Nave and aisles and transept and
portals combining the splendors of sunrise.
Interlaced, interfoliated, intercolumned
grandeur. AS I stood outside, looking at
the double range of flying buttresses and the
forest of pinnacles, higher and higher, until
I almost reeled from dizziness, l ex-
claimed: "Great doxology in stone!
Frozen prayer of many %nations" But