The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1896-10-02

aA M3apOcalyptic vision
I. DEWITT TALNAGE. wall of Heaven
have had proper recognition, but this,
in all the ages, is the first sermon on
the carbuncle. This precious stone is
| found in the East Indies, in color is an
intense scarlet, and held up between
your eve and the sun it is burning
coal. The poet puts it into rhythm as
he writes:
Like to the burning coal whence comes its
name
Among the Greeks as Anthrax known to fame
God sets it high up in Bible crystal
Biography. He cuts it with a divine
chisel. shapes it with precise geome-
try, and kindles its fire into an almost
supernatural fame of beauty. Its law
of symmetry, its law of zones, its law
of parallelism, something to excite the
amazement of the scientist, chime the
cantos of the poet, and arouse the ado
ration of the Christian. No one but the
infinite God could fashion carbuncle
as large as your thumb-nail, and as if
to make all ages appreciate the precious
stone he ordered it set in the first
row of the high priests breastplate in
olden times and higher up than the
ONYX and the emerald and the diamond,
and in Ezekiel's prophecies concerning
the splendors of the Tyrian court, the
carbuncle is mentioned, the brilliancies
| of the walls and of the tessellated
floors suggested by the Bible sentence,
| llxoA or,1 1nrxya in
the midst of the stones of fire. But in
my text it is not a solitary specimen
that l hand You. as the keeper of
museum might take down from
| the shelf precious stone and
allow you to examine it. Nor is
it the panel of a door that you
| might stand and study for its unique
carvings or hron zed trJceries, but there
is whole gate of it lifted before our
admiring and astonishe1 vision, aye!
two gates of it, aye! many gates of it:
~ will make thy gates of carbuncles. !"
| What gates? Gates of the church.
Gates of anything worth possessing.
Gates of successful enterprise. Gates
of salvation. Gates of national achieve
ment. Isaiah, who wrote this text,
wrote also all that about Christ las
the lamb to the slru -hter," and
spoke of Christ as saying, 81
have trod the winepress alone,
and wrote, "Who is this that cometh
from Edom, with dyed garments
from Bozrah?'' And do you think that
Isaiah in my text merely happened to
represent the gates as red rat S. as
carmine gates, as gates of carbuncle?
| No. He means that it is through at
tenement. through blOOi-r struggle,
through arouies we get into anything
worth getting into. Heavens gates
nav well lie male of pearl. bright,
peilrcid, cheerful capitalization, be-
cause all the struggles are over
and there is beyond those gates
nothin.t Tut raptureS and cam
tata and triumphal procession and
everla, ting holiday and kiss of
reunion. and so the 12 gates are
II pearls, and could be nothing else
than pearls. But Christ hoisted the
gates of pardon in his own blood, and
the MARKS of eicht fingers and two
thumbs are on each gate. aud as he
lifted the gate it leaned against his
forehead and took from it a crimson
! impress. and all those gates are deeoly
DYED. and Isaiah was right when he
spoke of these gates as gates of car
buncle.
What is true in spirituals is true in
temporals. There are young men and
older men who hone, through the right
sett ement of this acrid controversy
between silver and gold, or the il
metallic quarrel, that it will become
easy to make a living. That time will
never come. 1t never has been easy TO
make living. The men who have 1t
very easy now, went through hardships
and self-denials to which most young
men would never consent. Unless
they got it by inheritance, you cannot
mention 20 men who have come to
! honorable fortune that did not
fight their way inch by inch and
against fearful odds that again and
again almost destroyed them. For
some good reason God has arranged it
for all the centuries that the only way
for most people to get livelihood for
themselves and their families Is with
4
both hands and all the allied forces OF
BODY, mind and soul to push back and
push open the red gate, the gate OF
carbuncie. For the benefit of all
young men, if 1 had the time,
would call the roll of those who
overcame obstacle. How many OF
the mighty men who went one
way on Pennsylvania avenue and
reached the United States senate, or
walked the other way on Pennsylvania
avenue and reached the white house,
did not have to climb over political
obloquv? Not one. How mucn scorn
and scott. and brutal attack did Horace
Mann endure between the time when
he first began to fight for better
common school system in Massaehu'
sets, and the day when statue IN
honor of him was placed on the steps