The Monitor-register., 1896-10-02
GATE OF C"ARBUNCLE.
IT COMES BEFORE THE GAZE or
PEARL.

.,n-A Sermon Appropriate TO ih"i
v,d,al and National Circumstances
WASHINGTON, Sept. 27.-From a neg
,ootsd text and one to most people un'
Known Rev. DR.. Talmage this morning
nroduces a sermon appropriate to lndl-
ridual and national circumstances. The
snbieot was Coates of Carbunole, tne
text being Isaiah liv, IL, "And l VIII
make thy windows of agates and tiny
gates Of carbuncles.
Perhaps because a human disease VI
most painful and ofttimes fatal charac-
ter is named after it the church n tne
world have never done justice to thai
intense and all suggestive precious
STONE. the c~arbuncle. The pearl that
Christ picked up to illustrate MS ser
mon, and the jasper and the sapphire
and the amethyst which the apocalyptic
vision masoned into the wall OF heaven
have had proper recognition, but this
in all the ages, is the first serinon on
the carbuncle.
This p~recious stone is found III the
East Indies. in color is an intense scar
let and held up between your eye and
the sun it is a 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 CHS
ell. shapes it with a precise geometry
and kiudles its fire into an almost su-
pernatural flame 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 tie poet and arouse the adora-
ton of the Christian. No one but the
infinite God could fashion a carbuncle
as large as your thumb nail, and as if
to make all ages appreciate this precious
stone he ordered it set in the first row
of the high priests breastplate in olden
time and higher up than the onyx and
the emerald and the diamond, and in
Ezekiel's prophecies concerning the
s~plendors of the Tyrian court the car
buncle is mentioned, the brilliancies of
the walls and of the tesselated 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 q solitary specimen that | hand
you, as the keeper of a museum might
take down from the shelf a 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 bronzed traceries, but there is a whole
gate of it lifted before our admiring
and astounded 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 "as the lamb to the slaugh-
ter" and spoke of Christ as saying, 81
have trod the wine press alone,' and
wrote, who is this that cometh from
Edom, with dyed garments from Boz
rah?" And do you think that Isaiah in
my text merely happened to represent
the gates as red gates, as carmine gates,
as gates Of carbuncle? No. He means
that it is through atonement, through
blood red struggle, through agonies, we
get into anything worth getting into.
Heavens gates may well be made of
pearl, a bright, pellucid, cheerful crys-
Utilization, 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 reunion, and 80 the
10 gates are IL pearls and could be moth
ing else than pearls. But Christ hoist
ed the gates of pardon in his own
blood, and the marks of eight fingers
and two thumbs are on each gate, and
as he lifted the gate it leaned against
his forehead and took from it a crimson
impress, and all those gates are deeply
dyed, and Isaiah was right when he
spoke of those gates as gates of carbun-
Gle.
Suffering For Others.
What an odd thing it is, think some,
this idea of ~vicarious suffering or suffer-
ing for others. Not at all. The world
has seen vicarious suffering millions OF
times before Christ came and demon
strated it Oh 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
name. In faint whisper she said, ''Call
him Ben-oni," which means ''son of
my pain," and all modern travellers on
the road from Jerusalem to Bethel un-
cover their heads and stand reverently
at the tomb Of Rachel who died for her
boy. But in all ages how many mothers
die for their children, and in many
cases grown up children, who by recre-
ancy stab clear through the mothers
heart. Suffering for others? Why, the
world is full of it. "Jumpl' said the
engineer to the fireman ON the locomO-
tive. Zone of us is enough to die.
Jump!" And so the engineer died at
his post, trying to Ia the train. When
this summer the two trains crashed into
each other neal Atlantic City, among
the Al 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 today suffering for others. You
know and God knows that it is vicari-
u sacrifice. But on one limestone hill
about twice the height of this church,
five minutes walk from the gates Of
Jerusalem, was the sublimest case of
suffering for others that the world ever
saw or ever will see. Christ the victim,
human and satanic ~malevolence the exc
cutioner, the whole human race having
an overwhelming interest in the specta-
Gle. To open a way for us sinful men
and sinful women into glorious pardon
and high hope and eternal e%xaltation,
Christ, with hand dripping with the
rush of opened arteries, swung back the
gate, and behold 1t Is @ red gate, q
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 hope, 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. It never has been easy to make a
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 in
heritance you cannot mention 30 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 a livelihood for
themselves and their families is with
both hands and all the allied forces of
body, mind and seal TO push back and
push open the red gate, the gate of car