The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1896-10-09
A SEASONABLE SERMON.
Rev. DR.. Talmage Discourses upon
National Affairs.
There Are Empty Flour Barrels, Cold
EIre Crates NornOut apparel and
Cheorless Homes In This Land
of Peace and Plenty.

the subject: Gates of Carbuncle." 1t
was based ON the text:
And I viii make thy windows OF aRsteS, and
thy gates OF carbuncles--Isaiah Nv, -
Perhaps because human disease of
most painful and ofttimes fatal char
acter is named after it, the church
and the world have never done justice
to that intense and all-sugg estive pre-
cious stone, the carbuncle. The pearl
that Christ picked up to illustrate 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 IL is an intense
scarlet, 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
chisel, shapes it with a precise geOm-
etry. and kindles its fire into an almost
supernatural flame of bea uty. Its law
of symmetry, its law of zones, its law
of parallelism, some thing 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 it 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 diamond, and in Ezekiers prophe-
cies concerning the splendors of the
Tyrian court the carbuncle is men
toned. the brilliancies of the walls
and of the tessellated floors suggested
by the Bible sentence: Thou hast
walked up and down in the midst of
the stones of firel"
But in my text it is not a solitary
specimen that hand you, as the keep
er of a museum might take down from
the shelf n precious stone and allow
you TO examine it. Nor is it the panel
of door that you might stand and
study it for its unique carvings or
bronzed traceries, but there is whole
gate of it lifted before our admiring
and astounded vision; ayel two gates
of it; ayel many gates of it: II will
make thy gates of carbuncles." What
gates? Gates of the church. Gates of
anything worth possessing. Gates of
successful enterprise. Gates of sal
walton. Gates of national achieve
ment. Isaiah, who wrote this text,
wrote also all that about Christ ''as
the Lamb to the slaughter" and spoke
of Christ as saying, 81 have trOd the
wineprese Gl0ne,h 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 gates, as carmine gates,
as gates of carbuncles? No. He
means that it is through atonement,
through blood-red struggle, through
aRonies we get into anything worth
getting into. Heavens gates may well
be made of pearl, a bright, pellucid,
cheerful capitalization, 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 re-
union, and SO the II gates are ~ 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
IL 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.
What an odd thing it is, think some,
this idea of vlcarious suffering or suf-
fering for others! Not at all. The
world has seen vicarious suffering
millions 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 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 uncover their
heads and stand reverentiy 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 recreancy stab
clear though the mothers heart! Suf-
fering for others? Why the world is
full of it. Jump" said the engineer
10 the fireman on the locomotive.
zone of us is enough to die. Jumpr,
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 engi-
neer was found dead with one hand
ON the trottle of the locomotive, and
the other on the brake. Ayel there
are hundreds here to-day suffering
for others. You know and God
knows that it is vicarious sacri-
fee. But on one limestone hill about
twice the height of this church, five
minutes walk from the gates of Jeru-
salem, was the sublimest case of suf-
fering for others that the world ever
saw or ever will see. Christ, the vic
tim, human and Satanic malevolence
the executioner, the whole human
race having an overwhelming interest
in the spectacle. To open a way for
us sinful men and sinful women into
glorious pardon and high hope and
eternal exultation, Christ, with hand
dripping with the rush of opened ar
teries. swung back the gate of deepest
hue, gate of carbuncle.
What is true in spirituals is true in
temporals. There are young men and
older men who hope, through the right