The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-12-10
adversely. If we had our own way in life

before this we would have been impersoIia-
ti5hs of selfshness 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 the freckles on his face
were as the stars in the armament. One
of the swiftest transatlantic voyages made
last summer by the Etruria was because
she had stormy wind abaft, chasing her
from New York to Liverpool. But to
those going id an opposite direction
the storm was buffeting and hinder
ance. 1t is bad thing to have a
storm ahead pushing US back, but if
we are Gods children and aiming toward
heaven, the storms of life will only chase
us the sooner into the harbor. | 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.
1t was out of Dante's suffering came the
sublime "Divina Comedia," and out of
John Mi1ton's blindness came "Paradise
Lost" and ont of miserable infdel attack
came the Bridgewater treatise in favor of
Christianity, and out of Dayid'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
bereavementyour persecution your power
ties, your misfortunes may yet come an
ct ernal heaven.
Oh what mercy it is thatin 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, iii tie prophets,
major and minor, in st. Johns
Apocalypse, practically saying:
"Worlds worlds worldsl Get ready for
them" We have nice little world here
that we stick to as though losing wo lose
all. 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 1t revolves around the sun in
stead of the sun revolving around it. What
fuss we must make about this little bit of
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 I 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, cat Mazzaroth and Arct-
urus and his sons!" "Look there" says
st. John, sat the moon under Christ's feetv,
"Look there" says Joshua Eat the sun
standing still above Gideon !" "Look thereD
says Moses, Eat the sparkling armament! ?"
"Look, there" says Amos, the herdsman,
Eat the seven stars and Orion!' DON'T let
us be so sad about those who shove off
from this world under Christly pilota ge.
Don't let US be agitated about our own 60
ing off this little barge or sloop or canal
boat of 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 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, SIN
my Fathers house are many mansions"
do not know but that each world is rooo
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 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 festivity.
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 l endure the transport, the ecstasy
of such vision! must obey my text and
seek him. I viii seek him. I seek him
now, for call to mind that it is not the
material universe that is most valua BILE,
but the spiritual, and that each of US has
a soul worth more than all the worlds
which the inspired herdsman saw from his
booth on the hills of Tekoa. had stud
led 1t before, but the Cathe-
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 1913, only
two or three years ago completed. More
than 600 years in building. All Europe
taxed for its construction. It's chapel of
the Magi with precious stones enough to
purchase a kingdom. Its chapel of ST..
Agnes with master pieces of painting. It's
spire springing 511 feet into the heavens
It's stained glass the chorus of all rich
colors. Statues encireling the pillars ard
eneircling all. Statues above statues until
sculpture can do 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 T stood oI1tcide Iookiuo of