The Monitor-register., 1896-10-09

your oack on the music. and .ftou
=" ns joined the society of the blessed
iorced to quit it forever, and after
having clasped u long lost kindred in
heavenly embrace to have another sena-
iatlonl What an agony would thor no
IN such a goodby to heayenI GlorS bo
W goo on high that our names will he
81 p,a'nIy written in those volumes that
noi,ner SAINT nor cherub nor seraph nor
aionangel shall doubt it for one moment
.or U eternities, if there were roon,
ior SO many. The Oldest inhabitant Of
heaVen can read it, and the child that
ielG us mothers lap last night for heaven
Gan cad 1t. You will not lust look at
your name and close the hook Int no,
VIII stand and %soliloquize and say 'sIs
u not wonderful that my name is there
aS all! How much it cost my Lord to
get IL there! Unworthy am I to have it
III the same book with the sons and
daughters of martyrdom and with the
cholce spirits of all time. But there il
is, n so plain the word and SO plain
all the letters!''
And you will turn forward and hack
ward the leaves and see other names
'nere' perhaps your fathers name, and
your mothers name, and your brothers.
NAME, and your sisters name, and your
WIGS name, and apostolic names, and
say: Il am not surprised that those
names are here recorded. They were
better than 1 ever was. But astonish-
menu overwhelming, that my nam is in
this book!' And turning back to the
page on which is inscribed your name,
you will stand and look at it until, see
ing that others are waiting to examine
the records with reference to their own
names, you step back into the ranks of
the redeemed, with them to talk over
the wonderment.
Indelibly Written.
Again, If you are Sc happy as to find
your name in the volumes of eternity,
you will find it written indelibly. Go
up to the state department in this ma
tlonal capital and see the old treaties
signed by the rulers of foreign nations
just before o. just after the beginning
OF this century, and you will find that
some OF the documents are so faded out
that you can read only here and there a
word. From the paper yellow with
age, or the parchment unrolled before
you, time has effaced line after line.
You have to guess at the name and
perhaps guess wrongly. Old Time is
represented as carrying a scythe, with
which he cuts down the generations,
but he carries also chemicals with
which he eats out whole paragraphs
from important documents. We talk
about indelible ink, but there is no
such thing as indelible ink. 1t is only a
question of time, the complete oblitera-
ton of all earthly signatures and en-
grossments. But your name put in the
heavenly record, all the mi1leniums of
heaven cannot dim it. After you have
been so long in glory that, did you not
possess imperishable memory, you
would have forgotten the day of your
entrance, your name on that page will
glow as wildly as on the instant it was
traced there by the finger of the Great
Atoner.
There will be new generations coming
into heaven, and a thousand years from
now, from this or from other planet,
souls may enter the many mansioned
residence, and, though your name were
once plainly on the books, suppose it
should fade out? How could you prove
to the newcomers that it had ever been
written there at all? Indeliblei Incapa-
BILE of being Cancelled! Eternity as help
less as time in any attempt at erasure!
What a reinforcing, uplifting thought
Other records in heaven may give out
and will give out. There are records
there in which the recording angel
writes down our sins, but it is a book
full of blots, so that much of the writ
ing there cannot be read or even guessed
at. The recording angel did the writ
ing, but our Saviour put in the blots,
for did he not promise, 81 will blot out
their transgressionsl" And if some one
in heaven should remember some of our
earthly iniquities and ask God about
them the Lord would say: "Oh, I for
got theml I completely forgot those
sins, for I promised, Their sins and
their iniquities will 1 remember no
more" In the fires that burn up u
world all the safety deposits, and all
the title deeds, and all the halls of rec
ord, and all the libraries will disappear,
worse that when the 200, 900 volumes
and the 700, 900 manuscripts of the
Alexandrian library went down under
the torch of Omar, and not a leaf or
word will escape the fame in that last
conf1agration, which 1 think will be
witnessed by other planets, whose in
habitants will exclaim: ''Lookl There
is a world on fire." But there will be
only one conflagration in heaven, and
that will not destroy, but irradiate. I
mean the conflagration of splendors that
blaze on the towers and domes, and
temples and thrones, and rubbed and
diamonded walls in the light Of the sun
that never sets. Indeliblel
More Light.
There is not on earth an autograph
letter or signature of Christ. The only
time he wrote out a word on earth,
though he knew SO well how to write,
he wrote with reference to having it
soon shuff1ed out by human foot, the
time that he stopped down and with his
finger wrote on the ground the hypocrisy
of the Pharisees. But when he writes
your name in the heavenly archives, as
I believe he has or hope he may, it is to
stay there from age to age, from cycle
to cycle, from con to con. And SO for
all you Christian people I do what John
G. Whittier, the dying poet, said he
wanted done in his home. Lovely man
he wasl I sat with him in a haymow a
whole summer afternoon and heard him
tell the story of his life. He had for
many years been troubled with insomnia
and was a very poor sleeper, and he al
ways had the window curtain of his
room up SO as to see the first intimation
of sunrise. When he was breathing his
last, in the morning hour, in his home
in the Massachusetts village, the nurse
thought that the light of rising sur was
too strong for him and SO pulled the
window curtain down. The last thing
the great Quaker poet did was to wave
his hand to have the curtain up. He
wanted to depart in the full gush of the
morning. And I thought it might be
helpful and inspiring to all Christian
souls to have more light about the fu-
ture, and SO I pull up the curtain in the
glorious sunrise of my text and say,
Rejoice that your names are written
in heaven" Bring on your doxologiesl
Wave your palms, Shout your victoriesl
Pull up all the curtains of bright expec-
tationsl Yea, hoist the window itself,
and let the perfume of the morning
glories" of the kings garden come in
and the music of harps all a-tremble