The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-04-01
,nv. The sermon that I am

finite agony. The sermon that / am
now preaching believes in a God of
loving. kindly warning, the God of
spring aud winter, the God of the
Pleiades and Orion.
You must remember that the winter
Is just as important as the spring. Let
one winter pass without frost to kill
vegetation and ice to bind the rivers
and snow to enrich our fields, and then
you viii have to enlarge your hospitals
and your cemeteries. "a green Christ.
mas makes fat graveyard, was the
old proverb. Storms to purify the air.
Thermometer at ten degrees above
zero 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 are more men ruined
by prosperity than by adversely. If
we had our own way in life. before this
we would have been impersonations of
selfishness and worldIiness and dis
gushing sin, and pulled up until we.
would have been like julius Cesar,
who was made by sycophants to believe
that he was divine and the freckles on
his face were as the stars of the frma-
ment- r-.r -
One of the swiftest transatlantic oy-
ages 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 intolerance tits a
bad thing to have a storm ahead, push
ing us back; but if we be Gods chill
drens and aiming toward Heaven the
storms of life win only chase us the
sooner into the harbor. am so glad
to believe that the monsoons and ty-
phoons and mistrals and siroccos 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 Orion.
the sublime 'Divina Commedia" and
out of John. Millions blindness came
Paradise Lost" and out of miserable
infidel attack came the "Bridgewater
Treatise in favor of Christianity, and
out of David's exile came the songs of
consolation, and out of the sufferings
of Christ came the possibility of the
worlds redemption, and out of your
bereavement, your persecution, your
poverties, your misfortunes may yet
come an eternal Heaven a. AEE o.!
When read, 'In my Fathers house
are many mansions" 1 do not know
but that each world is q room, and as
many rooms as there are worlds. stel-
lar stairs stellar galleries, stellar hall
ways, stellar windows, stellar domes.
How our departed friends must pity
us, shut up in these cramped apart
ments, tired if we walk fifteen miles,
when they some morning, by one stroke
of wing, can make circuit of the whole
stellar system, and be back in time
for mathis! Perhaps yonder twinkling
constellation is the residence of the
martyrs;r that group of twelve lumi-
naries is the celestial home of the
Apostles Perhaps that steep of light
is the dwelling-place of angles cheru-y
bic, seraphic, archangelic. A mansion
with as many rooms as worlds, and all
their windows illuminated for festivity.
Oh. how this widens and lifts and
stimulates our expectation How little
it makes the present, and how
stupendous it makes the future! How
it consoles us about our pious dead,
who, instead of being boxed up and un-
der the ground, have the range of
as many rooms as there are worlds, and
welcome everywhere, for it is the Fa-
theirs house, in which there are many
mansionsl Oh, Lord God of the Seven
Stars and Orion, how can / endure the
transport, the ecstasy of such vision!
must obey my text and seek Him.
viii seek Him. seek Him now, for
call to mind that it is not the material
universe that is most valua BILE, but the
spiritual. and that each of us. have a
soul, worth more than all the worlds
which the inspired herdsman saw from
his booth on the field of Tekoa.
had studied it before, but the ca
thedral of Cologne, Germany, never inn
pressed me as it did the last time saw
it. 1t is admittedly the grandest Gothic
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 construc-
ton. It's chapel of the Magi, with
precious stones enough to purchase a
king dom. It's chapel of st. Agnes, with
masterpieces of painting. Its spire
springing five hundred and eleven feet
into the heavens. It's stained glass the
chorus of all rich colors. Statues en-
circling the pillars and encircling all.
StatueS-above statues until sculpture
can do no more. but faints and falls
back against carved stalls and down
on pavements, over which the kings
and queens of the earth have walked
to confession. Nave and aisles and
transept and portals combining the
splenGors of sunrise. Interlaced. inter- !
foliated, intercolumned grandeur. As
stood outside, looking at the double
range of flying buttresses and the |
forest of pinnacles, higher and higher |
and higher, until l almost reeled from
dizziness, exclaimed: "Great doxolgy
in stone! Frozen prayer of many ma.
tionsI' 20 --t ...f.fttg.. ,.a,9g /
But while standing there / saw O
poor man enter and put down his pack |
and kneel beside his burden on the |
hard floor of that cathedral. And tears |
of deep emotion came into my eyes, as |
said to myself: There is soul worth |
more than all the material surround-s
ings- That man will live after the last 1
pinnacle has fallen, and not one stone |
of all that cathedral glory shall re-
main uncrumbled. Heis now a Lazarus |
in rags and poverty and WEAKNESS, but !
immortal, and a son of the Lord !
God Almighty; and the prayer he now
offers, though amid many superstitions,
I believe God will hear; and among the |