Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1892-09-24

not WORKOUT mansion, with faded curtains
and outlandish chairs and cracked ware.
No, it is as fresh and fair and beautiful as
though it were completed but yesterday.
| The Kings Of the earth shall bring their honor
and glory into it.
| do not know but that Christ referred to
the real juice of the grape when He said that
! we should drink new wine in our Fathers
kingdom, but not tue intoxicating stuff OF
this worlds brewing. 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 q glorious banquet
Harki the chariots rumbling in the distance,
l really believe the guests are coming now.
The gates swing open, the guests dsmount,
the palace is filling, and all the chalicss,
flashing with pearl and amethyst and car
buncle, are lifted to the lips of the myriad
banqueters, while standing in robes of snowy
white they drink to the honor of our glori-
Gus King,
"oh. " you say. shat is too grand place
/ for you and me-" No, it is not. If spider,
according to the text, could crawl up on 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
King2
Years ago, with lanterns and torches and
a guide, went down in the Mammoth
cave of Kentucky. You may walk
fourteen miles and see no sunlight. It
is a stupendous place. Some places the
roof of the cave is hundred feet
high. The grottoes filled with weird
1 echoes: cascades falling from invisible height
/ to invisible death. Stalagmites rising up
/ from the floor of the cave, salactites de
/ scsnding from the roof of the cave, joining
/ each other and making pillars of the Al
mighty's sculpturing. There are rosettes Of
amethyst in halls of gypsum. As the guide
carries his lantern ahead of you the shadows
4 hau on md
! trial. The darkness is fearful.
Two people, getting lost from their guide
/ only for few hours, years ago were de-
mented. and for years sat in their insanity.
! You feel like holding your breath as you
1 walk across the bridges that seem to span
/ the bottomless abyss The guide throws his
calcium light down into the caverns, and
the lightrolls and losses from rock to rock
+ and from depth to depth, making at every
! plunge new revelation of the awful power
/ that could have made such a place as that
! A sense OF sutfocation comes upon you as
you think that you are two hundred AMI
I fifty feet in straight Inns from the summit
surface of the earth.
The guide after awhile takes you into what
4 is called the "star chamber;" and then he
says to you, "Sit here" and then he takes
| the lantern and goes down under the rocks,
1 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
kiudling one of the lanterns and pacing it
in a cleft of the rock there, is reflection
cast on the dome of the cave, arb there are
stars coming out in constitutions bril-
( liant night heaven5-and you involuntarily
exclaim, Beautiful! beautiful"
Then he takes the lantern down in other
! depths of the cavern and wauders on and
wanders off antil he comes up from behind
the rocks gradually, and it seems lie the
/ dawn of the morning until it gets brighter
l. IL - rIyIl al
1 triloquist, and he initiates the voices of the
morning, and soon the gloom is all gone and
you stand congratulating yourself over the
wonderful spectacle.
Well, there are a great many people who
look down into the grave as great cavern.
They think it is a thousand miles subterrau-
eous and all the echoes seem to bo the voices
/ of despair, and the cascades seem to be the
falling tears that always fall, aud the gloom
OF earth seems coming up IN stalagmlte,
and the gloom of the eternal world seems
! descending in the stalactite, making Pill
lars of indescribable horror The grave
is no such place as that to me, thank GOD!
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 antaems,
aud all the falling waters are fountains OF
salvation. and after awhile we look up, and
behold the cavern of the tomb has become
kings star chamber.
And while we are looking at the pomp of
it an everlasting morning begins to rise, and
all the tears of earth crystalline into stalag-
mite, rising up in a pillar on the one side,
and all the glores of heaven seem to be de-
scending in a stalactite. making pillar on
the other side, ami you push against the
gate that swings between the two pillars
and as that gate flashes open you find it as
one of the twelve gates which are twelve
pearls. Blessed be God that through this
Gospel the mammoth cave of the sepulchsr
has become the illuminated star chamber of
the Kingi Oh, the palacesl the eternal
palaces! the Kings palaces!