The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1888-12-13

healing and curative power of the Son OF
God. "Oh," you say, NOW you have a su-
| perfuous idea. We are not sick. Why do We
1 want cassia? We are athletic. Our respira.
ton is perfect. Our limbs are 1.-THE, and in
these cool days we feel we could bound like
the roe" beg to differ, my brother, from
you. None of you can be better in physical
health than am, and yet must say we are
all sick. have taken the diagnosis of your
case, and have examined all the best authori-
ties on the subject, and have come now to
tell you that you are full of wounds and
bruises and putreiying sores which have not
been hound up or modified with ointment.
The marasmus of sin in on us-the palsy, the
| dropsy, the leprosy. The man that is expir-
| ing tonight on Fulton street.-the allopathic
| and homeopathic doctors having him up,
and his friends now standing around to take
| his last words-is no more certainly dying
| as to his body than you and are dying, I'M
less we have taken the medicine from God's
| apothecary. All the leaves of this Bible are
| only SO many prescriptions from the divine
| physician, written, not in Latin, like the
prescriptions OF earthly physicians, but in
| plain Eng lish, so that u man, though fool,
need not err therein. Thank God that the
Saviours garments smell of cassia.
Suppose a man were sick, and there was q
| phial on his mantel- piece with medicine he
knew would cure him, and he refused to take
| it, what would you say of him? He is u
| suicide. And what do you say of that man
who. sick in sin, has the healing medicine of
Gods grace offered to him, and refuses to
| take it? If he dies he is u suicide. People
talk as though God took a man and led him
out to darkness and death. as though He
| brought him up to the cliffs and then pushed
him off. Oh, no. When man is lost it is
not because God pushes him off; it is because
| he jumps of. In olden times suicide was
buried at the crossroads, and the people
W. nStn moA RI Throw or his
grave. So it seems to me there may be in
this house man who is destroying his own
soul, and as though the angels of God were
here to bury him at the point where the roads
of life and death cross each other, throwing
upon the grave the broken law and great
pile of mismproved privileges, so that those
going may look at the fearful mound and
learn what suicide it is when an immortal
soul, for which Jesus died. puts itself out of
the way.
When Christ trod this planet with foot of
flesh the people rushed after him people who
were sick, and those who being SO sick they
could not walk, were brought by their friends.
Here l see a mother holding up her little
child and saying: Cure this Group, Lord
Jesus. Cure this scarlet fever" And Others
saying: ''Cure this ophthalmia. Give ease
and rest to this spinal distress Straighten
this clug foot" Christ made every house
where He stopped a dispensary. do not be-
lieve that in the 10 centuries that have gonei
by since, His heart has got hard. ! feel that
and get His benediction. 0 Jesus, here We
are. We want healing. We want sight. We
want health. We want life. The whole need
not physician, but they that are sick.
Blessed be God that Jesus Christ comes
through this acknowledgement. His garments
smelling of myrrh'-that means fragrance
land aloes'-they mean bitter sacrifcial
memories-"and cassia'-that means medi-
cine and cure; and according to my text, He
comes ''out of the ivory palaces"
You know, Off you do not know will tell
you now that some of the places of olden
time were adorned with ivory. Ahab and
Solomon had their homes furnished with it.
The tusks of African and Asiatic elephants
were twisted into all manners of shapes, and
there were stairs OF ivory, and chairs ofivory,
and tables ofivory, and floors of ivory and
pillars ofivory, and windows of ivory, and
fountains that dropped into basins of ivorv,
and rooms that had ceilings of ivory. Oh
white and overmastering beauty. Green
tree-branches sweeping the curbs. Tapestry
trailing the snowy floors. Brackets of light
flashing on the lustrous surroundings. Sill
very music ripping to the beach of the arches,
The mere thought of it almost stuns my
brain, and you say: cob, if could only
have walked over such floors! If could have
thrown myself in such q chair If could have
heard the drip and dash of those fountains?"
You shall have something better than that if
You only let Christ introduce you. From
that place He came, and to that place He
proposes to transport yon, for His gar
ments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia,
out of the ivory palaces"
Oh, what q place heaven must be! The
Tuileries ofthe FRENCH, the Windsor Castle of
the English, the Spanish Alhambra, the
Russian kremin, dungeons compared with
it! Not SO many castles on either side the
Rhine as on both sides of the river Of God,
the ivory palaces! One for the angles, in
suffererably bright, winged, fire-eyed, tenn
pest-charioted; one for the martyrs, with
blood-red robes, from under the altar; one
for the King, the steps of His palace the
crowns of the church militant; one for the
singers, who lead the one hundred and forty
and four thousand; one for you ransomed
from sin; one for me, plucked from the burn
ing. Oh thei worry palaces!
Today it seems as if the windows of those
palaces were illumined for some great vic
DRY, and l look and see climbing the stairs
of ivory, and looking from the windows of
ivory, some whom we knew and loved on
earth. Yes, l know them. There are father
and mother. not 80 years and 70 years as
when they left us, but blth and young as
when on their marriage day. And there are
brothers and sisters, merrier than when we
used to romp across the meadows together.
l.
erysipelas healed. The heart-break over.
Oh, how fair they are in the ivory palaces!
And your dear little children that went out
from you-Christ did not let one of them
drop as He lifted them. He did not wrench
one of them from you No. They vent as
from one they loved well to one whom they
loved better. If should take your
little child aud press it's soft face
against my rough cheek, ] might keep
it little while; but when you, the mother,
came along, it would struggle to go with
you. And SO you stood holding your dying
child when Jesus passed by in the room, and
the little one sprang out to greet Him. That
ia all. Your Christian dead did not go down
into the dust and the gravel and the mud.
Though it rained all that funeral day, and
the water came up the wheels hub as you
drove out to the cemetery, it made no differ
ence to them, for they stepped from the home
here to the home there, right into the ivory
palaces. All is well with them. All is well.
1t is not dead weight that you lift when
bed up soft with Yalyet promises, and He
says: PUT her down here very gently. PUP
that head, which will never ache again, or
this pillow of halleluiahs Send up word
that the procession is coming. Ring the
bells. Ring? Open your gates, We ivory
paIaees' And go YOUR loved pnes are there.
They are just as certainly there having died
in Christ, as you are here. There is only
one thing in heaven they have not got.
They want it. What is it? Your company.
But, oh, my brother unless you change your
tack you cannot reach that harbor. You
might as well take the Baltimore & Ohio
railroad, expecting in that direction to reach
Toronto, Ms to 20 on in the way some of you
are going and yet expect to reach the ivory
palaces Your loved ones are looking out of
the windows of heaven now. and yet you
seem to turn your back upon them. You do
not seem to know the sound of their voices
as well as You used to, or to be
mayed By the sight of their dear faces. Call
louder, ye departed ones. Gall Louder from
the ivory palaces When ! think Of that
place, and think Of my entering it, feel awk-
ward | fesl az sometimes when ! have been
exposed to the weather. and my shoes have
been bemired, and my coat Is soiled, and my
hair is disheveled, and l stop in front of
some fine residence where have an errand.
feel not fit to goin rs am and sit among pol
isled guests. 30 some of us feel about heav-
on. We need to be washed-we need to be
rehabiIitated before we go into the ivory
palaces Eternal God, let the surges of Thy
pardoning mercy roll over us. | want not
only to wash my hands and my feet, but like
some skilled diver standing on the pierhead,