Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1890-07-31
SUNDAYS SERMON.
ONE OF REV. DIR. TALMADGE's
sTERLING DIsCOURsEs.
Subject" The wide-open Door"

TEXT: "And, behold door was opened
in heauen. REV. iv., l.
John had been the pastor Of a church in
Ephesus. He had been driven from his
position in that city by an indignant pop
ulace. The preaching of pure and earnest
gospel had made an excitement danger
GUS to every form of iniquity. This will
often be the result of pointed preach
ing. Men will finch under the sword
strokes of truth. You ought not to be
surprised that the blind man makes an
cutlery OF pain when the surgeon removes
the cataract from his eye. 1t is good sign
when you see men uneasy in the church pew,
and exhibiting 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 good sign when he begins to
be little cross. And so / notice that spir-
itual invalids are in a fair way for recovery
when they become somewhat irascible and
choleric under the treatment of the truth.
But John had so nightly inculpated public
iniquity that he had been banished from his
church and sent to Potmas, adesolate island,
only mile in breadth, against whose rocky
coasts the sea rose and mingled its voice with
the prayers and hymnlngs of the heroic exile.
You cannot but contrast the condition of
this banished apostle with that of another
famous exile. Look at the apostle on Pat
mos and the great Frenchman on st. Helena.
Both were suffering among desolation and
barrenness because Of offenses committed.
Both had passed through lives eventful and
thrilling. Both had been honored and de-
spised. 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 authority, 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 self-aggrandisement
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 heaven-rending 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 re-
morse and despair, while the other was
lighted up with thanksgiving and mex
tinguishable hope. Over st. Helena gath
cred the blackness and darkness, clouds,
lighted up by no sunrising, but rent and
fringed and heaving with the ightnings of
a wrathful God, and the spray flung over
the rocks seemed to hiss with the condemna-
ton, 'The way Of the ungodly shall perish"
But over Patmos the heavens were opened,
and the stormy sea beneath was forgotten
in the roll and CLEAN of waters from under
the throne like crystal; and the barrenness
of the ground under the apostle was forgot
ten as above him he saw the trees of life all
bending under the rich glow of heavenly
fruitage, while the hoarse blast of contend
ing 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.
What dull spot upon which to stand and
lt,nxva rrlA Wien Had
been some tropical island, arbored with the
luxuriance of perpetual summer and drowsy
with breath of cinnamon and cassia, and tes- |
selated with long aisles of geranium and cac-
tus we would not have been surprised at the |
splendor Of the vision. But the last place |
you would go to if you wanted to find beau |
tiful visions would be the island of Patmos. !
Yet it is around such gloomy spots that God
makes the most wonderful revelation. Itwas
looking through the awful shadows of q
prison that John Bunyan saw the gate of the 1
celestial city. God there divided the light /
from the darkness In that gloomy abode, 4
on scraps Of old paper picked up about his
room, the great dream was written.
1t was while John Calvin was q refugee
from bloody persecution, and was hid in a
house at Angouleme, that he conceived the
idea of writing his immortal institutes.
Jacob had many time seen the sun break
ing through the mists, and kindling them
into shafts and pillars of fiery splendor that
might well have been a ladder for the angels
TO tread on but the famous ladder which he
saw SCARED through gloomy night over the
wilderness. The night OF trial and desola-
tion is the scene of the grandest heavenly
revelations. From the barren, surf beaten
rock of Patmos John looked up and saw that
a door was opened in heaven.
Again, the announcement of such an
opened entrance suggests the truth that God
shocking down upon the earth and observ-
ant of all occurrences. IL we would gain
wide prospect we climb up into tower or
mountain The higher up we are the broad
or the landscape we behold. Yet our most
comprehensive view is limited to only few
Ieagues-here a river and there lake and
yonder mountain peak. But what must
must be the glory Of the earth in the eye Of
Him who from the door of heaven behoids at
one glance all mountains and lakes and prai-
ries and oceans, lands bespangled with trop-
ical gorgeousness and Arctic regions white
with everlasting SHOWS, Lebanon majestic
with cedars and American wilds solemn with
nnbroken forests of pine, African deserts of
glistening sand and wildernesses of water
with harvests of wheat and rice and maize.
fne glory OF every zone the whole world Of
mountains and seas and forests and islandi
taken in in single glance of their great
Creator
- AS we take our stand upon some high point
single objects dwindle into such insignificence
that we cease to see them in the minutia, ano
We behold only the grand points of the
scenery. But not so with God. Although
standing far up in the very tower of heaven,
nothing by reason of its smallness escapes His
vision. Every lily of the field, every violet
under the grass the tiniest 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 the worlds
moral changes. Not one tear of sorrow falls
in hospital or workshop or dungeon but He
sees it. and in high heaven makes record of
its fall
The worlds iniquities in all their ghastIi-
ness glover under His vision. Wars and
tumults, and the desolations of famine and
earthquake, whirlwind and shipwreck
spread out before Him. If there were no
being in all the universe but God He could
be happy with such an outlook as the door
of heaven. But there He stands no more
disturbed by the fall of a kingdom than the
dropping of leaf, no more excited by the
rising of a throne than the bursting of a bud.
the falling of deluge than the tricklinr of |