The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-09-28
THE GATES OF CARBUNCLE.
TALMAGE breaches THE FIRST
SERMON ON THE SUBJECT.

Fire and Given High Place in
the CrystaIIOgraphy of the Bible
Cut With "a Divine Chisel and
shaped With a Precise Geometry.
Washington, Sept. 27.-From neglected
text, and one to most people unknown,
Rev. Dr. Talmage this morning produces
a sermon appropriate TO individual ana
national circumstances. The subject was;
Gates of Carbuncle. the text being lisa. 81;
Z: And I will make thy windows Of
agates, and thy gates of carbuncles'
Perhaps because human disease Of
most painful and oftumes fatal charac-
ter is named after it. the church and the
world have never done justice to that
intense and all-suggestive precious stone.
the carbuncle. The pearl that Christ pick
ed up to illustrate his sermon, and the
jasper and the sapphire and the anne
thyst which the apocalyptic vision mason
ed into the 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 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 crystallogra-
phy He cuts il with divine chisel,
shapes it with a precise geometry and
kndles its fire into an almost supernat-
ural flame of beauty. Its law of symme-
try it's law of zones, its law of paral-
lelism, something to excite the amaze
Inent 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 breastplate in olden time and
higher up than the onyx and the emerald
and the diamond, and in Ezekiels proph-
ecies concerning the spendors of the
Tyrian court, the carbuncle is mentioned,
the brilliancies of the walls and OF the
tessellated floors. suggested by the Bible
sentence, Thou hast walk up and down
in the midst of the stones of fireI' But
in my text IL is not solitary specimen
that I hand you. as the keeper Of a mu-
scum might take down from the shelf a
precious stone and allow 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 be-
fore our admiring and astounded
vision, ayel two gates of it, aye! many
gates of it: Il will make thy gates of
carbuncles." What gates? Gates of
the church Gates of anything
worth possessing. Gates of successful en-
terprise. Gates of salvation. Gates of
national achievement. Isaiah, who wrote
al oil no al Hbr.gg
''as the lamb to the slaughter" and spoke
of Christ as saying, I have trod the
winepress 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 car
mine gates. as gates of carbuncle? No.
He means that il is through atonement,
through blood-red struggle, through ago
MES we get into anything worth getting
into. Heavens gates may well be made
of pearl, bright pellucid, cheerful crys-
Utilization, because all the struggles are
over and there is beyond those gates moth
ing but raptures and cantata and trium-
phal procession and everlasting holiday
and kiss of reunion, and so the twelve
gates are twelve pearls, and could be moth
ing else than pearls. But Christ hoisted
the gates of pardon in his own blood, and
the marks of eight fingers and two thumbs
1t 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 vicarious suffering or suffering
for others! Not at all. The world has
seen vlcarious suffering millions of times
before Christ came and demonstrated it on
a scale that eelipsed 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 travel
ers on the road from Jerusalem to Bethel
uncover 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 recreancy stab
clear through the mothers heartl Suffer-
ing for others? Why, the world is full of
it. Jump said the engineer to the fire.
man on the locomotive. "One of us is
enough to die. Jump And so the en-
gineer died at his post. trying to save the
train. When this summer the two trains
crashed into each other near Atlantic
City, among the forty-seven who lost their
lives, the engineer was found dead with
one hand on the throttle Of the locomo-
tive and the other on the brake. Aye!
there are hundreds here to-day suffering
for others. You know and God knows that
St is vicarious secrifice. But on one lime
stone hill about twice the hight 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 ex-
ecutioner, 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 exultation, Christ
with hand dripping with the rush of open
ed arteries, swung back the gate. and be-
hold ii is a red gate, a gate of deepest
hue gate of carbuncle.
What is true in sprituals is true in tenn
porals There are young men and older
men who hope. through the right settle-
ment Of this acrid controversy between
silver and gold, or the bimetalic quar-.
rel, that 1t will become easy TO make q
living. That time viii never come. 1t
never has been easy to make a living. The
men who have II very easy now went
through hardships and self-denials TO
which most young men would never con-
sent. Unless they got IL bV inheritance