The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-12-03

and four thousand; one for you ransomed
from sin; one for me, plucked from the
burning. Oh, the ivory palaces.
To-day it seems to me as if the windows
Of those palaces were illumined for some
great victory, and l look and see
on floors of ivory, and looking from the
windows Of ivory, some whom we knew
aud loved on earth. Yes / know them.
There are father and mother, not eighty
two years and seveuty-Ifine years, as when
they left US, but blithe 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 The
cough gone. The cancer cured. The cry
sipelas healed. The heart-b'eak over. Oh,
how fair they are in the ivory pala
ces! 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
went as from one they loved well to one
whom they loved better If I should take
your little child and press its soft face
against my rough cheek, | might keep it u
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 spraDg out TO greet him.
That is 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 to the wheels hub as you
drove out to the cemetery, it made no diff
ference 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 we'll.
1t is not a dead weight that you lift when
you carry a christian out. Jesus makes the
bed up soft with velvet promises, aud he
VS.: "Put her down here very gently
Put that head, which VIII never ache again,
on this pillow of hallelujahs. Send up word
that the procession is coming. Ring the
bells. Ring! Open your gates, ye ivory
palaces" And so your loved ones are
there. They are just as certainly there,
having died in Christ, as that you are here.
There is only one thing more they want.
Indeed, there is one thing in heaven they
have not got. They want it. What III it!
Your company. But, oh, my brother,
nnless you change your tack you cannot
reach That harbor. You might as well take
the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, expecting
in that direction to reach Toronto. as to go
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 moved by the sight
of their dead faces. Call louder, We de-
parted ones. Call louder from the ivory
palaces. When 1 think of that place, and
think of my entering it, feel awkward; |
feel as sometimes when l have been exposed
to the weather, and my shoes have been be-
mired, and my coat Is soiled, and my hair is
disheveled, and stop in front of some fine
residence where have an errand. feel not
fit to go in as l am and sit among polished
40 Of t1e haa
We need to be washed-we need TO be
rehabllitated 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
pier-head, who leaps into the wave and \
comes up at far-distaht point from where
he went in, so l want to go down and so /
want to come up. o Jesus, wash me in the
waves of thy salvation.
And here l ask you to solve a mystery
that has been depressing me for thirty
years. | have asked it of doctors of divinity |
who have been studying theology half
century, and they have given me no salts
factory answer. / have turned over all the
books in my library, but got no solution to
the question, and to-day l come and ask you |
for an explanation. BY what logic was
Christ induced to exchange the ivory palaces |
of heaven for the cruci6xion agonies of |
earth? shall take the first thousand mill |
ion years in heaven to study out that |
problem. Meanwhile and now, taking it as
the tenderest and mightiest of all facts |
that Christ did come, that he came |
with spikes in his feet, came with J
thorns in his brow, came with spears |
in his heart, TO save you and to save me.
"God SO loved the world that he gave his
only begotten son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have ever
lasting life." o Christ, whelm this audi
ence with thy compassion. Now them
down like summer grain with the harvest
ing sickle of thy grace. Ride through to-
day the conqueror, thy garments smelling
"of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of
the ivory palaces"
o sinner, fling everything else away and
take Christ Take him now, not to-mor-
row. During the night following this very
day there may be an excitement in your
dwelling and tremulous pouring out of
drops from an unsteady and affrigbted
hand, and before tomorrow morning your
chance may be gone.