The Brookhaven leader., 1891-11-19


name of the greatest missionary the
landed there, and that was enough to
make IL famous while the world stands
and famous in Heaven when the world
has become a charred wreck.
This island has a wonderful history.
With six thousand Knights of St
John it at one time stood out against
two hundred thousand warriors under
"Solyman the Magnificent" The city
has three thousand statues, and a
statue TO Apollo called Colossus, which
has always since been considered one
of the seven wonders of the world
1t was twelve years in building and
was seventy cubits high, and had a
winding stairs to the top. 1t stood
fifty-six years, and then was FRUSTRATED
by an earthquake. After lying in ruins
for nine hundred years it was pur-
| chased to be converted to other
purposes, and the metal, weigh
ing seven hundred and twenty thousand
pounds, was put on nine hundred camels
| and carried away. We were not per-
mitted to go ashore, but the lights all
up and down the hills show where the
city stands, and nine boats come out to
take freight and to bring three passen-
gers Yet all the thousands of years of
its history are eclipsed by the few hours
or days that Paul stopped there. AS l
stood there on the deck of the Minerva,
| looking out upon the place where the
colossus once stood, bethought my
self of the fact that the world must have
god of some kind. 1t is to me an in
| finite pathos-this Colossus, not only of
Rhodes, but the colossal in many parts
of the earth. This is only the world S
blind reaching up aud feeling after
| God. Foundered human nature must
have a supernatural aim to help it
ashore. All the statues and images of
| heathendom are attempts to bring
| Celestial forces down into human af-
fairs. blessed be our ears that we have
| heard of an ever-present God and that
| through Jesus Christ lie comes into our
| hearts and our homes, and with more
| than fatherly and motherly interest
and affection He is with us in all our
struggles and Gereavements and vicissi-
| tudes. Rhodes needs something higher
than the Colossus, and the day will
come when the Christ whom Paul was
serving when he sailed in this harbor
of Rhodes, shall take possession of that
| island.
But there is one island that longed
to see more than any other. / can af-
| ford to miss the princes among the is
| lands, but | must see the king of the
| archipelago. The one l longed to see
is not so many miles in circumference
| as Cyprus, or Crete, or Paros, or Naxon,
or Scio, or Mitylen, but / had rather,
| in this sail through the Grecian archi-
pelago, see that than all the others;
for more of the glories of Heaven
| landed there than on all the islands
and continents since the world stood.
AS we come toward it feel my pulses
| quicken. Il, John. was in the island
| that is called Patmos." 1t is a pile of
rocks twenty-eight miles in circum-
ference. A few expresses and interior
olives pump living out Of
the earth and one palm tree
spreads it's foliage. But the
barrenness and gloom and loneliness of
the island made it a prison for the
banished evangelist. DOmitian could
not stand his ministry, and one day,
under armed guard, that minister of the
Gospel stepped from tossing boat to
| these dismal rocks, and walked up to
| the dismal cavern which was to be his
| home, and the place where should pass
| before him all the conflicts of coming
time and all the raptures of coming
| eternity. Is it not remarkable that
nearly all the great revelations of music
and poetry and religion have been made
| to men in observation-disclosures and Mil
| ton banished into blindness; Beethoven
| banished into deafness; Dante writ
ing his "Divina Commedia' dur
| ing the nineteen years of Punishment
from his native land; Victor Hugo writ
ing his Les Miserables'' exiled from
home and country on the island of
Guernsey, and the brightest visions of
| the future have been given to those who
| by sickness or sorrow were eXiled from
| the outer world into rooms of suffering.
Only those who have been imprisoned
| by very hard surroundings have had
great revelations made to them. So
Patmos, wild, chill and bleak and ter
rible, was the best island in all the
archipelago, the best place in all the
earth for Divine revelations. Before a
panorama can be successfully seen the
room in which you sit must be dark
ened, and in the presence of John
was to pass such panorama
as no man ever before saw or ever
will see in this world, and hence
the gloom of his surroundings was
help rather than a hinderance. All the
surroundings of the place effected ST.
Johns imagery when he speaks of
Heaven. st. John, hungry from en-
forced abstinence, or having no food
except that at which his appetite re-
vOlted, thinks of Heaven: and as the
famished man is to dream of bountiful
tables covered with luxuries, so st.
John says of the inhabitants of Heaven:
''They shell hunger no more" Scarcity
of water on Patmos and the hot tongue
of st. Johns thirst leads him to admire
Heaven as he says: "They shall thirst
no more" st. John hears the waves
of the sea wildly dashing against the
rocks, and each wave has a voice
and all the waves together make
a chorus, and they remind him
of the multitudinous anthems of
Heaven, and he says: ''They
are like the voice of many waters"
One day, as he looked off upon the sea,
the waters were very smooth, as it is
TODAY while we sail them in the