Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1896-10-06


pearl that Christ picked up to illus
trate his sermon, and the jasper and
the sapphire and the amethyst which
the apocalyptic vision masoned into the
wall of heaven have had proper recog-
milton, 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 scar
let, and held up between your eye 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.
Eod sets it high up in Bible crystallo-
graphy. He cuts it with a divine
chisel, shapes it with precise geo.
metry, and kindles its fire into an al
most supernatural flame of beauty. It's
law Of symmetry, it's law OF zones, its
law OF parallelism, something to excite
the amazement of the scientist. chime
the cantos Of the poet, and arouse the
alteration 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 1t set in
the first row of the high priests breast
plate in olden time and higher up than
the onyx and the emerald and the dia-
mond, and IN Ezekiel's prophecies con-
nf ho Txrr.ia
court, the carbuncle is mentioned, the
brilliancies of the walls and of the tas-
sellated 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 soli-
tary specimen that | hand you, as the
keeper of a museum might take down
from the shelf precious stone and al
low you to examine it, Nor is it the
panel of 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: Il will
make thy gates of carbuncles." What
of anything worth possessing. Gates
of successful enterprise Gates of sal
walton. Gates of national achievement
Isaiah, who wrote this text, wrote also
all that about Christ "as the lamb to
the slaughter" and spoke of Christ as
saying, II have trod the wine-press
alone" and wrote, who is this that
cometh from Edom, with dyed gar
ments from Bozrah?" And do you
think that Isaiah in my text merely
happened to represent the gates as red
gates, as carmine gates, as gates Of car
buncle? No. He means that it is
through atonement, through blood-red
struggle, through agonies We get into
anything worth getting into. Heav-
ems gates may we'll be made of pearl,
bright, pellucid, cheerful crystalliza-
ton, because all the struggles are over
and there is beyond those gates moth
ing but raptures and cantata and tri-
umphal procession and everlasting
holiday and kiss of reunion, and so the
twelve gates are twelve pearls, and
could be nothing else than pearls. But
Christ hoisted 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 carbuncle.
We are not indebted to history for
our knowledge of the greatest of ma
tional crises. Many of us remember
X, and fathers and mothers now living
had better keep telling that story to
their children so that instead OF their
being dependent upon cold type and
obliged to say, "On such page of such
book you can read that" will they
rather be able to say, my father told
me so"' my mother told me sou Men
and women who wildly remember 1861,
selves the historians, telling it, not
with pen, but with living tongue and
voice and gesture. That is the great
use of Memorial Decoration Day, for
the Gala lilies on the grave-tops soon
become breathless of perfume, and in
week turn to dust like unto that
which lies beneath them. But the story
OF courage and self-sacrifice and pa
triotlsm told on platforms and in
households and by the roadside and in
churches and in cemeteries, by that an
nual recital will be kept fresh in the
memory of generations as long as our
American institutions are worthy of
preservation. Long after you are dead
your children will be able to say, with
the Psalmist, I'VE have heard with our
ears, o God, our fathers have told us,
what work thou didst in their days, in
the times of old" But what time it
was! Four years of inconsistencies!
Four years of brotherly and sisterly
estrangement! Four years OF martyr
dom! Four years of massacre! Put
them in a long line, the confiagration
OF cities, and see them light up whole
continent Put them in long rows, the
hospitals, making a vast metropolis OF
pain and paroxysm! Gather them in
one vast assemblage, the millions of
bereft from the st. Lawrence to the
Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pa