Owingsville outlook. [volume] (Owingsville, Ky.) 1879-192?, 1896-10-01
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Noted Preacher Euogizes a
Precious But Humble Stone.
Hark to the thoirs in white when the
Gates of Carbunclc Are Passed and
the Weary soul Sinks to Its Etcr-
nal Rest.

The subject of Talmagc'S sermon
Sunday was, 'uatcS of Carbunclc,' the
text being, Isa.. liv l., And will
make thy windows of agatcs and thy
gates of carhunclcS.'
Perhaps because human disease of
most painful and ofttimcS fatal char
actcr is named after it, the church and
the world have never done justice to
that intense and all-suggcstivc pre-
cious stone, the carbunclc. The pearl
that Christ picked up to illustrate his
sermon, and the jasper and the sap
phirc and the amethyst which the
apocalyptic vision maSoncd iuto the
wall of Heaven have hal proper rccog-
milton, but this, in all the ages, is the
first sermon on the carbunclr.
This precious stone is found in the
East Indies, in color an immense scar
let, and held up between your eye and
the sun it is a burning coal. The poet
puts il into rhythm aS he writes:
. Like to the burning Goals when e comes its
name
Among tho Greeks as Anthrax known to
fame"
Col sets it high up in Bible crystal
Biography. lie cuts it with "A divine
chiscl, shapes it with a precise geom-
omctrv, and kiudlcs its fires into
an almost supernatural flame of
beauty. Its laws of symmetry, its
law of zone, its law of parallc.ism,
is something to excite the amlZcmcnt
of the scientist, chime the cantoS of
the poet, and arouse the alteration Of
the Christian. No one but the infinite
God couli fashion carbunclc As large
rs your thumb nail, and as if To make
all ages appreciate this precious stone
lie ordered il set in the first row of the
high priests breast plate in olden time
and higher mp than the onyx and the
emerald and the diamond. and in Eek
icl's prophecies concerning the SPLEEN
doris of the Tyrian court, the carbun-
Gle is mentioned, the briilian-
cicS of the walls and of the tcS-
ISOLATED floors suggested by
the Bible sentence, Thou hast walked
up and down in the midst of the stones
OF fire. But in my text it is not a
solitary specimen that hand you, as
the kecper 81 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 cary
ings or bronZcd tracerieS, but there is
whole gate % it lifted before our adj
miring and astonishcd vision, aye. two
gates of it, aye. many gates of it: 81
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
achievement. Isaiah, who wrote this
text. wrote also all that about Christ
las the Lamb To the slaughter" and
spoke of Christ as saying, Il have trod
the wincprcss alone, and wrote, "Who
is this that comcth from Elom, with
dyed garments from Bozrah?' And do
you think that Isaiah in my text mere
ly happened to represent the gates as
red gates. as carmine gates, as gates of
carbunclc? No. lie means that it is
through atonement, through blood-red
struggle, through agonics we get into
anything worth getting into. Heavens
gates may as well be made of pearl,
a bright, pellucid, cheerful crystalli-
cation, because all the struggles are
over, and there is Beyond those gates
nothing but raptures, and cantata and
triumphal procession and everlasting
holiday and kiss of rchnion, and SO the
IL gates are II pearls anl could he
nothing else than p rs. SUIT Chris
hoisted the gates a. par6 ~ in His OWL
blood, and the marks II eight fingers
and two thum b> are a each gate, and
as lie lifted me gate leaned against
His forehead ana tooS from it Grim
son impress, and al those gates are
deeply dyed, and isaiah was right
when he spoke OF those gates as gates
of carbunc'".
What an odd thing it is, think some,
this idea G'i vicarious suffering or suf-
fering for others. Not at all. The
world has seen vicarious suffering mil
lions of times before Christ came and
demonstrated it ON a scale that eclipsed
all that went before and all that shall
come after Rachel lived only long
enough after the birth of her son to
give him a N. me. In faint whisper she
said: Cali him Ben-oni which
means ''son Of my pain" and all mod
ern travellers on the road from Jerusa.
lem to Bethel uncover their heads and
stand revercntly at the tomb of Rachel
who die / for her boy. But in all ages how
many mothers die for their children,
who by recreancy stab clear through
the mothers heart! Suffering for
others? Why, the world is full of it.
Jump" said the engineer to the fire.
man on the locomotive. lone of us is
enough to die. Jump" And SO the
engineer died at his post, trying to
save the train. When this summer the
two trains crashed into each other
near Atlantic City, among the A. who
lost their lives the engineer was found
dead with one hand on the throttle of
the locomotive and the other on the
brake. Aye, there are hundreds here
to-day suffering for others. You know
and God knows that it is vicarious sacri-
flee. But on one limestone hill about
twice the height of this church, five
minutes walk from the gates of Jerus-
allen, was the sublimest case of suffer-
ing for others that the world ever saw
or ever will see. Christ, the victi =,
human and satanic malevolence the
executioner, the whole human race
having an overwhelming interest in
the spectacle. To open way for us
sinful men and sinful women into glor-
ious pardon and high hope and eternal
exultation, Christ, with hand dripping
with the rush of opened arteries,
swung back the gate, and behold! it is
a red gate, n gate of deepest hue, a
gate of carbuncle.
What is true in spirituals is true in
temporals. There are young men and
older men who hops, through the right
settlement of this acrid controversy be-
tween silver and gold, or the bimetallic
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 it very
easy now went through hardships and
self-denials to which most young men
would never consent. Unless they got
it by inheritance, you can not mention 20
men who have come to honorable for
tune that did not Fl ght their way inch by
inch, and against fearful odds that