The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-11-20

we ore dOQ'S cnuur0n anu etminS tOWaru
heaven, the storms Of life will only chase
rs the sooner into the harbor. I am so
glad to believe that the monsoons and ty-
phoons and mistrals and siroccos OF land
and sea are not unclaimed maniacs let
loose upon the earth, but under divine SUI
pervision. am SO glad that the God Of
the Seven Stars is'also the God Of Orion.
It was out of Dante's suffering came the
sublime "Divins Comedia," and out of
John Milton's blindness came "Paradise
Lost" and ont Of miserable infidel attack
came the Brideewa.er 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
bereavemsnt,your persecu.ion,your power
ties, your misfortunes may yet come an
eternal heaven.
Oh what a mercy it is that in the text and
all up and down the Bible God induces us
to look out toward other worldsi Bible
astronomy in Genesis, in Joshua, in Job,
in the Psalms, in the prophets,
major and minor, in st. Johns
Apocalypse, practically saying:
"Worids! worlds! worlds! Get ready for
them" We have nice little world here
OH. We are afraid of falling off this little
raft of 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 revolres 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 short time be-
tween two spasms, the paroxysm by which
it was hurled from chaos into order and
the paroxysm of its demolition! And am
glad that SO many texts call us to look OFF
to other worlds, many of them larger and
costlier and more respondent. "Look
there" says Job, Eat MazzarOth and Arct-
urus and his sons" "Lool there" says
st. John, "at the moon under Christ's feet!',
"Look there" says Joshua, sat the sun
standing still above Gideon !" "Look there"
says Moses, "at the sparkling firmamentw
"Look, there" says Amos, the herdsman,
Eat the seven stars and Orionw 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 60
ing off this little barge or slopp or canal
boat of a world to get on some Great East
ern of the heavens. Don't let us persist
in wanting to stay in this barn, this shed,
this clubhouse of q 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 l read, SIN
my Fathers house are many mansions" l
do not know but that each world is a room
and as many rooms as there are worlds,
stellar stairs, steller galleries, stellar hall
ways, stellar windows, stellcr 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 tne stroke Of the wing, can make
circuit of the whole stellar system and
yonder twinkling 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 festivty.
Oh. how this widens and lifts and stimu-
lates our expectation! How little it makes
the present and 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 have the range
Of as many rooms as there are worlds, and
welcome everywhere, for 1t is the Fathers
house, in which there are many mansions!
o, Lord God of the Seven Stars and Orion,
how can endure the transport, the ecstasy
of such vision! must obey my text and
seek him. l will seek him. l seek him
now, for call to mind that it is not the
material universe that is most valuable
but the spiritual, and that each of us has
soul worth more than all the worlds
which the inspired herdsman saw from his
booth on the hills Of Tekoa. had stud.
led it before, but the Cathe.
dral of Cologne, Germany, never i'm.
mittedly the grandest Gothic structure in
the world, it foundations laid in 1913, only
two or three years ago completed. More
than GOO years in building. All Europe
taxed for its construction. Its chapel of
the Magi with precious stones enough to
purchase a kingdom. Its chapel of st.
Agnes with master pieces of painting. Its
spire springing 511 feet into the hcave ems.
Its stained glass the chorus of all rich
colors. Statues encircling the pillars and
encircling all. Statues above statues until
sculpture can do no more, but faints and
falls back against carved stalls and down
queens of the earth have walked to confess
sion. Nave and aisles and transept and
portals combining the splendors of sunrise.
Interlaced, interfoliatcd, intercolumned
grandeur. A stood outside, looking at
the double range of flying buttresses and the
forest of pinnacles, higher and higher, until
l almost reeled from dizziness, l ex-
claimed: "Great doxology in stone!
Frozen prayer of many nations" But
while standing there saw a poor man en-
ter and put down his pack and kneel beside
his burden on the hard floor of that cathe-
dral. And tears of deep emotion came
into my eyes as said TO myself: "There
is soul worth more than all the material
surroundings. That man will live after the
last pinnacle has fallen, and not one stone
of all that cathedral glory shall remain I'M
crumbled. He is now Lazarus in rags
and poverty and WEAKNESS, but immortal
and a son of the Lord God Almighty; and
the prayer he now offers, though amid
many superstitions, be4aeve God will
hear, end among the Apostles whose sculp-
tured forms stand in the surrounding
inches he will at last be lifted, and into the
presence of that Christ whose sufferings
are represented by the cruciix before
which he bows, and be raised in due time
out of all his poverties into the glorious
home built for him and built for rs by Him
who maketA the Seven Stars and Orion"
A Pension Once Romance.