The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-09-30

what God commands you to do. God is
not ashamed to do small things. He is
not ashamed to be found chiselling q
grain of sand, or helping a honey bee
to construct its cell with mathematical
accuracy, or tinging a shell in the surf,
or shaping the bill of chaffinch. What
God does, he does we'll What you do,
do well, be it a great work or a small
work. If ten talents employ all the
ten. If five talents employ all the five.
If one talent, employ the one. If only
the thousandth part of a talent, employ
that ''Be thou faithful unto death, and
will give thee the crown of life"
tell you if you are not faithful to God in
a small sphere, you would be indolent
and insignificant in a large sphere.
Again. my text teaches me that re-
pulsiveness and loathesomeness will
sometimes climb up into very elevated
places. You would have tried to have
killed the spider that Solomon saw.
You would have said: This is no
place for it. If that spider is deter
mined to weave web, let it do so down
in the cellar of this palace, or in some
dark dungeon" All! the spider of the
text could not be discouraged. 1t
clambered on, and clambered up high
er, and higher, and higher, until after
awhile it reached the kings vision, and
he said: The spider taketh hold with
her hands, and is in the kings palaces"
And so it often is now that things that
are loathsome and repulsive get up into
very elevated places.
The church of Christ, for instance, is
palace. The King of Heaven and
earth lives in it. According to the
Bible, her beams are of cedar, and her
rafters of fir, and her windows of agate,
and fountains of salvation dash a rain
of light. 1t is a glorious palace-the
church of God is; and yet, sometimes,
unseemly and loathsome things creep
up into it-evil-speaking. and raDcor,
and Islander, and backhiting, and abuse,
crawling up on the walls of the church,
spinning a web from arch to arch, and
from the top of one communion tanllard
to the top of another communion. Clio
rious palace in which there ought only
to be light and love. and pardon, and
grace; yet spider in the palace!
Home ought to be castle. 1t ought
to be the residence of everything royal.
Kindness, love, peace, patience, and
forbearance ought to be the princes re-
siding there; and yet sometimes dissi-
patton crawls up into that home, and
the jealous eye comes up, and the scene
Of peace and plenty becomes the scene
of domestic jargon and dissonance
You say: "What is the matter with the
home?" 1 will tell you what is the
matter with it. A spider in the palace.
A well developed Christian character
is a grand thing to look at. You see
some man with great intellectual and
spiritual proportions. You say: How
useful that man must be!' But you
find, amid all his splendor of faculties,
there is some prejudice, some within,
some evil habit, that a great many peO-
pie do not notice, but that you have
happened to notice, and is gradually
spelling that mans character-it is
gradually going to injure his entire in
fuence. Others may not see it, but you
are anxious in regard to his welfare,
and now you discover it. A dead fly in
the ointment. a spider in the palace.
Again, my text teaches me that per-
severance will mount into the kings
palace. 1t must have seemed a long
distance for that spider to climb in Sol
omon's splendid residence, but it start
ed ut the very foot of the wall and
went up over the panels of Lebanon
cedar, higher and higher, until it stood
higher than the highest throne in all
the nations-the throne of Solomon.
And so God has decreed it that many
of those who are down in the dust of
sin and dishonor shall gradually attain
to the Kings palace. We see it in
worldly things. Who is that banker in
Philadelphia? Why, he used to be the
boy who held the horses of Stephen
Girard while the millionaire went in to
collect his dividends. ArlSwright tolls
on up from a BARRIERS shop until he
gets into the palace of invention. Sex
swineherd until he gets into the palace
of Rome. Fletcher tolls on up from the
most insignificant family position until
he gets into the palace of Chris
tan eloquence. Hogarth, engrav
ing pewter pots for a living,
tolls on up until he reaches the
palace of world renowned art And
God hath decided that, though you may
be weak of arm, and slow of tongue,
and be struck through with great
many mental and moral deficits, by His
almighty grace you shall yet arrive in
the Kings Palace-not such an one as is
spoken of in the teXt-nOt one of mar
ble-not one adorned with pillars of
alabaster and thrones of ivory, and
flagons of FURNISHED gold-but palace
in which God is the King and the angels
Of Heaven are the cup-bearers. The
spider crawling up the wall of Solo
mons palace was not worth looking
after or considering as compared with
the fact that we, who aSe worms of the
dust, may ascend into the palace of the
King immortal BY the grace of God
may we all reach it. o, Heaven is not
a dull place. it is not a worn out man
sion with faded curtains and outland-
sh chairs and cracked ware. No; it is
fresh and fair and beautiful as though
it were completed yesterday. The
kings of the earth shall bring their
honor and glory into it.
A palace means splendor of apart
nents. Now, l do not know where
Heaven is, and do not know how it
looks. but if our bodies are TO be resur-
-ected in the last day 1 think Heaven
must have a material splendor as well
Is a spiritual grandeur. o, what
grandeur of apartments when that
Divine hand which plunges the sea into
blue and the foliage into green and
,ets the sunset on fire shall gather all |