The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-06-10

work OF trying to make the world better,
gone down, and all this within a few
years. They were well built as to Derma-
! nence an durability. All the talk about
| these buildings as mere fire traps is the
| usual can't. for there is as much secular
can't as religious can't Have you heard
| in the last forty years of any church, or
any hall, or any theater which, after de-
| struction, was not called a tire-trap2
| That charge always makes lively OPEN
| ing for any desc ription of a fire. There
| haI @ have been no better structures, sec
| ular or religious, put up in the last
| twenty-five years than the three Brooklyn
| Ia bernacleS, and The modes of egreSs from
| them so ample that the thousands Of
worshippers assembled in any of them
| could be put safely on the streets inside
of five minutes. The fact is that there is
nothing in this world incombustible
When the great Chicago and Boston fires
took place they burned up stones and
iron. The human race will go on build
ing inconsumable churches and incon-
sumable banks and inconsumable store
houses and incousumable cities, and then
all will be consumed in the worlds last
fire.
Builders who had large experience and
| established reputation, pronounced the
| Brooklyn Tabernacles perfect structures.
| Dub WUdb Is tu6 LiGdu4lS Vi GuG buLc6
fres2 There may be hundred differe en- t
lessons learned by Il hundred different
people, and legitimate lessons. AS for
myself dd .ourn the most of the meaning
to the next world. We learn there in two
minutes more than we can find out here
in fifty years With that anticipation,
mysteries do not often bother me.
One reason for these consecutive disas-
tiers may be that the patience Of the best
a IN ia
Brooklyn Tabernacle, was to be perfected.
purified by fire. Mighty discipline for
one of the Lord S hosts. Whether L ever
meet them on earth or not, it will be a
theme Of heavenly Renaissance. We
shall talk it all over, the story of the
three fires.
Auo her reason why the last church
went down may have been that some of
US were idoliziug the building, and the
Lord will not allow idolatrY The house
was such Midsummer Nights Dream
OF beauty. Enchantment lifted in gal
leries and sprung in arches, and gloritied
in the light that came through windows,
touching it with their deftest fingers.
The acoustics so rare that thousands
of ears were in easy reach OF
common accentuation. An organ which
was a hallelu. ah set up in pipes and
banked in keys, waiting for a musicians
gregational song as an archangel might
lead heaven. Glorious organ! When it
died down into the ashes of that fire, per-
hans its soul went up where Handel and
Haydn began TO play on it. The most
superb audience room that | ever galed
on. or ever expect to see, until | enter the
Temple of the Sun. On one memorial
wall of that building, stone which had
rolled down from Mt. Calvary, where our
Lord died, and two tables of stone that
were sawed off from Mt. Sinai, and
brought on camels across the. desert by
nv arran cement. and a part of PaupS
pulpit, which the Queen OF Greece al
lowed me. from Mars hill. Architecture
so chaste, so grand, so appropriate, so
suggestive, so stupendous. One OF the
doxologies of heaven alighted. Well, per
haps we thought too much of it. When
we think too much of our children, the
Lord takes them, and when we think too
much OF our church, the Lord summarily
removes it.
1 suppose another reason for the depart
ure of that house was that 1t had done us
work. Church buildings, like indlvidu-
ais. accomplish what they were built for
and then 60 One person lives ninety
wears, another forty years, another three
years, and when Sod takes an individual
whether at ninety, or forty, or three
wears. his mission IS ended This last
church stood three years, and any person
who knows what multitudes nave there