The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-10-06

such birthday celebration at the close
of one century and reaching into new
century would be something in which
Heaven and earth could join. 1t would
not only be international, but inter
planetary, inter-stellar, inter-constel-
lation.
| II you remember what occurred on
the first Christmas night, you know
that it was not joy confined to our
world The choir above Bethlehem
was imported from another world,
and when the star left its usual
sphere to designate the birth
place all astronomy felt the thrill.
If there be anything true about
our religion, it is that other worlds are
sympathetic with this world and in
communication with it. The glorified
Heaven would join in such celebra-
ton. The generations that toiled to
have the world for Christ would take
part in such jubilation and prolonged
assemblage. The upper galleriesof Gods
universe would applaud the scene,
whether we heard the clap of their
wings and the shout of their voices or
did not hear them.
| Ayel Aye! 1 bethink myself such q
vast procedure as that might hasten
our Lords coming, and that the ex-
pectation of many millions of Chris
tians, who believe in the Second Adj
vent, might be realized then at that
conjunction of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. j do not say it
would be, vet who knows but that our
blessed and adored Master, pleased
with such plan of world wide observ-
ance, might say, concerning this wan
dering and rebellious planet: THAT
world, at last, shows a disposition to
appreciate what have done for it, and
with one wave of my SCARED hand, l
will bless and reclaim and save it."
That such a celebration of our Lords
birth. kept up for days and months,
would please all the good of earth, and
nightly speed on the gospel chariot,
and please all the heavens sanity,
cherubic, serap hic. archangelic, and di-
vine, is beyond question.
Whether this suggestion of a WORLDS
celebration of the nativity be taken or
not, it has allowed me an opportunity
ing my love for the great central char
acter of all time and all eternity. he
is the infinite None-such. The armies
Of Heaven drop on their knees before
Him After Bourdaloue, before over.
whelmed audiences, has preached Elm
and Milton in immortal blank verse
has sung Him, and Michael Angelo has
glorifled the ceiling of the Vatican
with His second coming, and martyrs
while girdled and canopied with
the flames of the stake have
with burning lips kissed His memory,
and in the hundred and forty and
four thousand" of Heaven with feet on
seas of glass intershot with sunrise,
have with uplifted and down-swung
ba ton, and sounding comets, and wav-
ing banners, and heaven-capturing
doxologies celebrated Him, the story
of His loneliness, and His might, and
His beauty, and His grandeur, and His
grace, and His intercession, and His
sacrifice, and of His birth and His death
will remain untold. Be His name on
our lips while we live, and when we
die after we have spoken farewell to
father and mother, and wife, and child,
let us speak that Name which is the
lullaby of earth and the transport of
Heaven.
Before the crossing of time on the
midnight between December 81, 1910.
and the 1st of January, 1901. many of
US will be gone. Some of you will
hear the clock strike IL of one century
and an hour after it hear it strike of
another century, but many of you will
not that midnight hear either the
stroke of the city clock, or of the old
timepiece in the hallway of the home
stead. Seven years cut wide swath
through churches and communities and
nations. But those who cross from
world to world before Old Time
in this world crosses that midnight
from century to century, will talk
among the thrones of the coming
earthly Jubilee, and on the river bank
and in the house of many mansions,
until all Heaven will know of the com.
ing of that celebration, that will fill
the earthly nations with joy and help
augment the nations of Heaven. But,
whether here or there, we will take
part in the music and the banqueting,
if we have made the Lord our portion.
Oh. how / would like to stand at my
front door some morning or noon OF
night and see the sky part and the
blessed Lord descend in person, not as
he will come in the last Judgment,
with fire and hail and earthquake, but
in sweet tenderness, to pardon all sin,
and heal all wounds, and wipe
away all tears, and feed all hunger,
and right all wrongs, and illumine all
, darkness, and break all bondage, and
/, harmonic all discords. Some think
he will thus come, but about that COM
ing make no prophecy, for / am not
, enough learned in the Scriptures as
, some of my friends are to announce a
very positive opinion But this l do
know, that it would be well for US to
} have an international and an inter.
world celebration of the anniversary OF
his birthday about the time of the birth
, of the new century, and that it will be
wise beyond all others wisdom for US
to take him as our present and ever.
lasting coadjutor, and if that Darling OF
, earth and Heaven will only accept you
and me, after all our lifetime OF
) unworthiness and sin, we can never pay
Him what we owe, though, through all
the eternity to come, we had every
: hour new song and every moment a
new ascription of homage and praise
For you see we were far out among the
/ lost sheep that the Gospel hymn SO
, pathetically describes:
, Out in the desert He heard its cry.
Sick and helpless and ready 10 die:
But all through the mountains, thunder-riven.
And up from the rocky steep,