The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-09-30


Doddridge. and Edward Payson, aud
John Milton, and Elizabeth Fry, and
Hannah More, and Charlotte Elizabeth,
and all the other kings and queens of
Heaven. o, my soul, what a compan-
ionship.
A palace means splendor of banquet.
There will be no common ware on that
table. There will be no unskilled mu-
sicians at the entertainment. There
will be no scanty supply of fruit or
beverage There have been banquets
spread that cost a million of dollars
each; but who can tell the untold
wealth of that banquet? I do not
know whether Johns description of it
is literal or figurative A great many
wise people tell me it is figurative; but
prove it 1 do not know but that
it may be literal. / do not know
but that there may be real
fruits pluczed from the tree of
life. do not know but that Christ re-
ferred to the real juice of the grape
when he said that we should drink new
wine in our Fathers kingdom, but not
the intoxicating stuff of this worlds
brewing. l do not say it is so; but l
have as much right for thinking it is SO
as you have for thinking the other way
AT any rate it will be glorious ban
quet. Harlxl the chariots rumbEng in
the distance. Ireally believe the guests
are coming now. The gates ewing
open, the guests dismount, the palace
is filing, and all the chalices fash
ing with pearl and amethyst,
and carbuncle are lifted to the
lips of the myriad banqueters,
while standing in robes of snowy white
they drink to the honor of our glorious
King. "Oh," you say, shat is too,
grand place for you and for me-"
No, it is not If a spider, according to
the text, could crawl upon the wall of
Solomon's palace, shall not our poor
souls, through the blood of Christ mount
up from the depths of their sin and
shame, and finally reach the palace OF
the eternal King? "Where sin abound
ed, grace shall much more abound, that
whereas sin reigned unto death, even
so may grace reign through righteous
ness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ
our Lord" One flash of that coming
glory obliterates the sepulcher.
Years ago, with lanterns and torches.
and a guide, we went down in the
Mammoth cave of Kentucky. You
may walk fourteen miles and see no
sunlight 1t is a stupendous place.
Some places of the roof of the cave are
one hundred feet high. The grottoes
filled with weird echoes, cascades fall
ing from invisible height to invisible
depth. Stalagmites rising up from the
floor of the cave-stalactites descend
ing from the roof of the cave, joining
each other and making pilloar of
the Almighty's sculpturing. There
are rosettes of amathyst in halls
of gypsum. AS the guide carries his
lantern ahead of you, the shadows
have an appearance supernatural and
spectral The darkness is fearful. Two
people getting lost from their guide
only for few hours, years ago, were
demented, and for years sat in theif
insanity. You feel like holding your
breath as you walk across the bridges
abyss. The guide throws his calcium
light down into the caverns,
and the light rolls and losses from
rock to rock, and from depth to
depth, making at every plunge a
new revelation of the awful power
that could have made such a place as
that. A sense of suffocation comes
upon you as you think that you
are two hundred and fifty feet in
straight line from che sunlit surface of
the earth. The guide after awhile
takes you into what is called the ''Star
Chamber and then he says to you:
"Sit here" and then he takes the Ian
tern and goes down under the rocks,
and it gets darker and darker, until the
night is so thick that the hand an inch
from the eye is undesirable. And
then, by kindling one of the lanterns,
and placing it in a cleft of the
rock there is a reflection cast on the
dome of the cave, and there are stars
coming out in constellations-a bril-
liant night Heaven-and you involun-
tarily exclaim Beautiful, beautiful
Then he takes the lantern down on
other depths of the cavern and
wanders on, and wanders on, until he
comes up from behind the rocks grad
ually. and it seems like the dawn of the
morning, and it gets brighter and
brighter. The guide is a skilled ven
triloquist. and he initiates the voices of
the morning, and soon the gloom is all
gone, and you stand congratulatin5
yourself over the wonderful spectacle.
Well, there are great many people |
who look down into the grave as a
great cavern. They think it is one
thousand miles subterraneous, and all
the echoes seem to be the voices of
despair, and the cascades seem to be |
the falling tears that always fall, and |
the gloom of earth seems coming up in |
stalagmite, and the gloom of the eter-
nal world seems descending in the stall |
actite, making pillars of indescriba BILE |
horror. The grave is no such place as
that to me, thank Godl Our Divine |
Guide takes us down into the great |
caverns, and we have the lamp to our |
feet and the light to our path and all |
the echoes in the riffs of the rock are |
anthems, and all the falling waters |
are fountains of salvation, and, after |
awhile, we look up, and behold! the |
Kings star chamber. And, while we
are looking at the pomp of it, an ever
lasting morning begins to rise, and all
the tears of earth crystalize into stalag-
mite, rising up in a pillar on the
one side, and all the glories of
Heaven seem to be descending in
a stalactite, making pillar on the
other side, and you push against
the gate that swings between the two
pillars, and as the gate flashes open
you find it Is one of the twelve gates