The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-09-25
"WLDE-OPEN DOOR"
DR.. Talmage Discusses ST. Johns
Vision.
The Doorway of Heaven Is an Entrance
for Prayers and an Egress for Bless
ings-The Christians Final En-
trance Into the Blessed Place.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage took for
the subject of q recent sermon al
Brooklyn Tabernacle the "Wide-Open
Door," preaching from the following
text:
And behold, door was opened In Heaven.
Rev. iv., 1.
John had been the pastor of church
in Ephesus. He has been driven from
his position in that city by an indig-
nant populace. The preaching of pure
and earnest gospel had made an excite
ment dangerous to every form of ini-
guilty. This will often be the result of
pointed preaching. Men will finch
under the sword strokes of truth. You
ought not to be surprised that the blind
man makes an outcry of pain when the
surgeon removes tho cataract from his
eye. 1t is a good sign when you see
men uneasy in the church pew and ex-
hibiting impotence at some plain ut
terance of truth which smites pet sin
that they are hugging to their hearts.
After the patient has been SO low that
for weeks he said nothing and noticed
nothing, it is thought to be sign when
no begins to be little cross. And so I
noticed that spiritual invalids are in a
fair way for recovery when they be-
come somewhat irrascible and choleric
under the treatment of the truth. But
John had SO nightly inculpated pub
lie iniquity that he had been banished
from his church and sent to Patmos, a
desolate island, only a mile in breadth,
against whose rocky coasts the sea
rose and mingled its voice with prayers
and hymnings of the heroic exile.
You can not but contrast the condi-
ton of this banished apostle with that
of another famous exile. Look at the
apostle on Patmos and the great French
man on ST. Helena. Both were suffering
amongdesolation and barrenness because
of offenses committed. Both had passed
through lives eVentful and thrilling.
Both had been honored and despised.
Both were imperial natures. Both had
been turned off to die. Yet mark the
infinite difference-one had fought for
the perishable crown of worldly author
ity, the other for one eternally lustrous.
The one had marked his path with the
bleached skulls of his followers, the
other had introduced peace and good
will among men. The one had lived
chiefly for elf-aggrandizement and
the other for the glory of
Christ The successes of the one
were achieved amid the breaking of
thousands of hearts and the acute,
Recommending cry of orphanage and
widowhood, while the triumphs of the
other made Joy in Heaven among the
angels of God.
The heart of one exile was filed with
remorse and despair, while the other
was lighted up with thanksgiving and
inextinguishable hope. Over st. Hell
ena gathered the blackness of darkness,
clouds lighted up by no sunrising, but
rent and fringed and heaving with the
lightnings of a wrathful God, and the
spray flung over the rocks seemed to
hiss with the condemnation: 1.-THE
way of the ungodly shall perish" But
over Patmos the heavens were opened,
and the stormy sea beneath was for
gotten in the roll and CLEAN of waters
from under the throne-like crystal, and
the barrenness of the ground under the
apostle was forgotten as above him he
saw the trees of life all bending under
the rich glow OF heavenly fruitage,
while the hoarse blast of contending
elements around his suffering body was
drowned in the trumpeting of trumpets
and the harping of harps, the victorious
cry of multitudes like the voice Of many
waters and the hosanna of hosts in
number like the stars.
AS We take our stand upon some high
point, single objects dwindle into such
insignihcance that we cease to see
them in the minuti@, and we behold
only the grand points Of the scenery.
But not so with God. Although stand
ing far up in the very tower of Heaven.
nothing by reason of its smallnes es-
capes his vision. Every lily of the field,
every violet under the grass, the tint
est heliotrope, aster and gentian are as
plainly seen by him as the proudest
magnolia, and not one vein of color in
their leaf deepens or fades without His
notice. From this door in Heaven God
sees all human conduct and tho worlds
moral changes. Not one tear of sorrow
falls in hospital or workshop or dun
geon but He sees it and in high Heaven
makes record Of its fall. Tho worlds
iniquities in all their ghastliness
glover under his vision. Wars and
tumults and the desolations of famine
and earthquake, whirlwind and ship
wreck. spread ont before Him. II there
were no being in all the universe but
Sod, He could be happy with such an
outlook as the door of Heaven. But
there He stands, no more disturbed by
tho fall of kingdom than the dropping
of "a leaf, no more excited by the rising of
throne than the bursting of bud, the
falling Of q de1uge than the trickling
OF a raindrop. Earthly royalty clutches
nervously its scepter and waits in sus-
pense tho win of infamed subjects, and
the crown is tossed from one family to
another. But above all earthly vicissi-
tude and the assault of human passions,
in unshaken security stands the King
OF kings, watching all the affairs of His
empire from the introduction of an era
to the counting of the hairs of your
head.