The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1888-12-14
SUBSCRIPTION: Sl.OO Per Year.

steps of His palace, the crowns Of the
church militant; one for tbs singers, wEO
lead the one hundred and forty and four
thousand; one for you ransomed from
sin; one for me, plucked from the burn
ing. Oh, the ivory palaces!
To-day IL seems to me as il the windows
Of those palaces were illumined for some
great victory, and look and soc climbing
the stair OF ivory and walking on floors Of
ivory, and looking from windows of ivory,
some whoIh we knew and loved on earth.
Yes, / know them. They are father and
mother, not eighty-two and seventy y-nine
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 erysipelas healed. The
heartbreak 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 went as
from one they loved well to One whom
they loved better. If l should take your
little child and press its soft face against
my rough cheek, 1 might keep it a little
while; but when you, the mother, came
along it would struggle to go with you.
And so you stood holding your dying child
the little one sprang out to greet Him.
That is all. Your Christian dead did not
go down into the dust and the gravel and
mud. Though 1t rained all that funeral
day, and the water came up to the wheels
hub as you drove out to the cemetery, ii
made no difference to them, for they
stepped from the home here to the homo
there, right into the ivory palaces. All ls
well with them. All is well.
1t is not q dead weight that Won lift when
you carry Christian out. jesus makes
the bed up soft with velvet promises, and
He says: "Put her down here very gently.
Put that head, which will 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 certain
| ly there, having died in Jesus, as that yoH
! are here. There is only one thing more
! they want. Indeed, there is one thing ia
| Heaven they have not got. They want IL;
what is it? Your company. But, oh, my
/ brother, unless you change your track you
can not reach that harbor. You might Ss
well take the Baltimore e. Ohio railroad,
| expecting in that'direction to reach Toron-
| to, as to go on in the way some of you are
| going, and yet you 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 %
| their dear faces. Call louder, ye de-
parted ones. Call louder from the ivory
palaces. When think of that place, ana
think of my entering it, feel awkward;
feel as sometimes when | have been ex-
posed to the weather, and my shoes have
been bemired, and my coat is soiled, and
haf 10 Oh cd nd I 9n
of some fine residence where / have an
errand. I feel not fit to go in as l am and
sit among polished guests. So some of us
feel about Heaven. We need to be washed,
we need to be rehabilitated before we 90
into the ivory palaces. Eternal God, l04
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, who leaps
| into the wave and comes up at a far-dis-
| tant point from where he went in, SO
want to go down and so / want to come
up. Oh, Jesus, wash me in the waves oS
| Thy salvation.
And here l ask you to solve a mystery
that has been expressing me for thirty
years. ] have asked of doctors Of divinity
who have been studying theology half
century, and they have given me no salts
| factory answer. 1 have turned over all
| the books in my library, but got no solu-
! ton to the question, and to-day 1 come
and ask you for an explanation. BY what
| logic was Christ induced to exchange the
| ivory palaces of Heaven for the crucifx-
| ion agonies Of earth? / shall take the
first thousand million years in Heaven to
study out that problem. Meanwhile and
now, taking it as the tenderest and might
| lest Of all facts that Christ did come, that
He came with spikes in His feet c@Ene
with 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 be-
| lieveth in Him should not perish, but have
! everlasting life" o, Christ, whelm this
| audience with Thy compassion. Now
| them down like summer grain with the
harvesting sickle Of Thy grace. Ride
| through to-day the conqucrOr, Thy gar
ments smelling ''of murrh, and aloes, and
( cassia, out of the ivory palaces"
o, sinner, fling every thing else away
and take Christi Take Him now, not to-
morrow. During the night following this
| very day there may be an excitement in
| your dwelling, and a tremulOus pouring
out of drops from an unsteady and af-
| fFighted hand, and before tomorrow
morning your chance may be gone.