News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-03-24

rivers and snow to enrich IL fields,
and then you will have to enlarge
your hospitals and your cemeteries.
ga green Christmas makes a fat
graveyard" gas the old proverb.
Storms to purify the air. Thermom-
eter at ten degrees above zer to
tone up the system. December and
January just as important as May and
June. tell you we need the storms
of life as much as we do the sunshine.
There T more men ruined by pros
perity than by adversely. If we had
our own way in life, before this we
would have been representations OF
s~elfshness and worldliness and dis
gushing sin, and pulled up until we
would have been like julius Caesar,
who was made by sycOphants to be
lieve that he was divine, and the
freckels on his face were as the stars
of the armament.
One of the swiftest transatlantic
voyages made last summer by our
swiftest steamer was because she
had a stormy wind abaft, chasing
her from New York to Liverpool.
But to those going in the opposite
direction the storm was a buffeting
and a hindrance. 1t is a bad thing
to have a storm ahead, pushing us
back; but if we be Gods children
and aiming toward heaven, the
storms of life will only chase us the
sooner into the harbor. I am so glad
to believe that the monsoons and ty-
phoons and mistrals and s%iroccos of
the land and sea are not unclaimed
maniacs let loose upon the earth, but
are under divine supervision! | am
so glad that the God of the Seven
Stars is also the God of OriOnl
TWAS out of Dante's suffering came
the sublime "Divina Commedia," and
out of John Milton's blindness came
Paradise Lost" and out of miser-
able infdei attack came the Bridge
water Treatise in favor of Christian
ity, and out of David's exile came the
songs of consolation, and out of the
sufferings of Christ came the posi-
bility of the worlds redemption, and
out of your bereavement, your perse-
cution, your poverties, your misfor-
tunes, may yet come an eternal
heaven.
THE ASTRONOMY OF THE BIBLE.
Oh, what a mercy it is that in the
text and all up and down the Bible
God induces us to look out toward
other words! Bible astronomy in
Genesis, in Joshua, in Job, in the
Psalms, in the prophets, major and
minor; in St. Johns Apocalypse,
practically saying: Worlds! worlds!
worldsl Get ready for them!' We
have a nice little world here that we
stick to, as though losing that we
lose all. We are afraid of falling off
this little raft of a world. We are
afraid that some meteoric iconoclast
will some night smash it, and we want
everything to revolve around it, and
are disappointed when we find that
it revolves around the sun instead of
the sun revolving around it. What
fuss we make about this little bit
of a world, its existence only a short
time between two spasms, the par
oxysm by which it was hurled from
chaos into order, and the paroxysm
of its demolition.
And I am glad that so many texts
call us to look off to other worlds,
many of them larger and grander
and more resplendent. Look there"
says Job, lat Nazareth and Arcturus
and his sons!' "Look there saws
st. John, 'tat the moon under Christ's |
feetl' Look there says Joshua,
'tat the sun standing still above
GibeOnr" Look there" says Moses,
cat the sparkling armament" Look
there" says Amos, the herdsman,
"at the Seven Stars and Orionl" Don't
let us be sad about those who shove
off from this world under Christly
pilotage. Don't let us be so agitated
about our own going off this little
barge or sloop or canal boat of a
world to get on some Great Eastern
of the heavens. Don't let us per-
sist in wanting to stay in this barn,
this shed, this clubhouse of a world,
when all the kings palaces, already
occupied by many of our best friends,
are swinging wide open their gates
to let us in.
THE HEAVENLY MANSIONS.
When | read, I'm my Fathers
L many mansions, " I do not
but that each world is a room,
and as many rooms as there are
worlds, stellar stairs, stellar CALLER
les, stellar Railways, stellar windows,
stellar domes. How our departed
friends must pity is shut up in these
apartments, tired if we
walk fifteen miles, when they some
morning, by one stroke of wing, can
make i cuit of the whole stellar sys-
tenn and be back in time for matinsl
Perhaps yonder twinkling constella-
ton is the residence of the martyrs;
group of twelve luminaries is
the celestial home of the Apostles.
Perhaps that steep of light is the
dwelling place of angels cherubic,
5eraphic, archangelic. A mansion
as many rooms as worlds, and
all their windows Illuminated for fes-
Oh, how this widens and lifts and
stimulates our expectation How little
it makes the present, and how stu
pendOus it makes the future! How
it consoles us about our pious dead.
who, instead of being boxed up and
under the ground, have the range of
as many rooms as there are worlds,
and welcome everywhere, for it is
the Fathers house, in which there
are many mansionsl o Lord Goa
the Seven Stars and Orion, how
can l endure the transport, the &C.
of such a visionl l must obey
my text and seek him. l will seek
him. seek him now, for | call to
mind that it is not the material uni
verse that is most valuable, but the
spiritual, and that each of us has a
soul worth more than all the worlds
the inspired herdsman saw
his booth on the hills of Tekoa.
l had studied it before, but the ca
5hedral of Cologne, Germany, never
impressed me as it did the last timeI
saw it. It is admittedly the grandest
structure in the world; its
foundation laid in 124S, only eight or
nine years ago completed. More than
SIX hundred years in building. All
Europe taxed for its construction. It's
of the Magi with precious
stones enough to purchase a king