The Monitor-register., 1897-03-12

IT'S but a narrow stream divides
This heavenly land from ours.
An Eloquent Invitation.
Oh, it is a great religion to live by
and a great religion to die by! There is
only one heart throb between you and
4 that religion. Just look into the face OF
your pardoning God and surrender your
self for time and for eternity, and he is
yours and heaven is yours and all is
yours. Some of you, like the young
man of the text, have gone far astray.
1 know not the history, but you know
it, Won know it. When a young man
went forth into life, the legend says,
his guardian angel went forth with
him, and getting him into a field, the
guardian angel swept a circle clear
around where the young man stood. 1t
was a circle of virtue and honor, and he
must not step beyond that circle. Arm
| ed foes came down, but were obliged to
halt at the circle. They could not pass.
But one day a temptress, with diamond
ed hand, stretched forth and crossed
that circle with the hand, and the
tempted soul took it, and by that one
fell grip was brought beyond the circle
and died. Some of you lave stepped be-
yond that circle. Would you not like
this day, by the grace of God, to step
back? This, | say to you, is your hour
of salvation. There was in the closing
hours of Queen Anne what is called the
clock scene. Flat down on the pillow in
helpless sickness, she could not move
her head or move her hand. She was
waiting for the hour when the ministers
of state should gather i'll angry contest
and worried and worn out by the com-
ing hour, and i'll m~omentary absence of
the nurse, in the power, the strange
power, which delirium sometimes gives
one, she arose and stood in front of the
clock and stood there watching the
clock when the nurse returned. The
nurse said, "Do you see anything pecul-
lar about that clock?" She made no
answer, but soon died. There is a clock
scene in every history. If some of you
would rise from the bed of lethargy and
come out from your delirium of sin and
look on the clock of your destiny this
moment, you would see and hear some
thing you have not seen or heard before,
and every tick of the minute, and every
stroke of the hour and every swing OF
the pendulum would say, Nov, now,
now, now!' Oh, come home to your
Fathers house! Come home, o prodi-
gal, from the Wilderness! Come home,
come home!
But 1 notice that when the prodigal
came. there was the fathers joy. He did
not greet him with any formal How
do you do?" He did not come out and
say; "You are unfit to enter. Go and
wash in the trough by the well, and
then you al come in. We have had
enough trouble with you" All, no!
When the proprietor of that estate pro-
claimed festival, it was an outburst of
a fathers love and a fathers joy. God
is your Father. / have not much sym
pathy with the description of God I
sometimes hear, as though he were a
Turkish sultan, hard and unsympathetr
ic, and listening not to the cry of his
subjects. A man told me he saw in one
of the eastern lands a king riding along,
and two men were in alteration and
one charged the other with having eaten
his rice, and the king said, ''Then slay
the man and by post mortem examina-
tion find whether he has eaten the rice. "
And he was slain. All, the cruelty of a
scene like that Our God is not a sultan,
not a despot, but a Father-kind, low
ing, forgiving-and he makes all heaven
ring again when a prodigal comes back.
81 have no pleasure" he says, "in the
death of him that dieth." All may be
saved. If a man does not get to heaven,
it is because he will not go there. No
difference the color, no difference the
history, no difference the antecedents,
no difference the surroundings, no diff
ference the sin. When the white horses
of Christ's victory are brought out to
celebrate the eternal triumph, you may
ride n of them, and as God is greater
than all, his joy is greater, and when a
soul comes back there is in his heart
the surging of an infinite ocean of glad
ness, and to express that gladness it
takes all the rivers of pleasure, all the
thrones of pomp and all the ages Of
eternity. 1t is a joy deeper than all
depth and higher than all height and
wider than all width and vaster than
all immensely. It overtops, it under
girds, it outweighs all the united SPLEEN
dor and joy of the universe and who can
tell what Gods joy is? You remember
reading the story of a king who on
some great day of festivity scattered sill
yer and gold among the people, who
sent valuable presents to his courtiers,
but methinks, when a soul comes back,
God is SO glad that to express his joy
he filings out new worlds into space and
kindles up new suns and rolls among
the white robed anthems of the redeem
ed a greater halleluiah, while with a
voice that reverberates among the noun
tains of frankincense and is echoed back
from the everlasting gates he cries,
"This, my son, was dead, and he is
alive againl''
He VIII Come Back.
At the opening of the exposition in
New Orleans ! saw a Mexican ~1utist,
and he played the solo, and then after
ward the eight or ten bands of music,
accompanied by the great organ. came
In, but the sound of that one flute as
compared with all the orchestras was
greater than all the combined joy Of the
universe when compared with the re-
sounding heart of Almighty God. For
ten years a father went three times a
day tathe depot. His son went off in
aggrayating circumstances, but the ia
ther said. HE will come back" The
strain was too much and his mind part
ed, and three times a day the father
went. In the early morning he watched
the train, its arrival, the stepping out
OF the passengers and then the depar-
ture of the train. At noon he was there
again watching the advance of the train,
watching the departure. At night he
was there again, watching the coming,
watching the going, for ten years. He
was sure his son would come back. God
has been watching and waiting for some
OF you, my brothers, 10 years, 20 years,
80 years, 40 years, perhaps 80 years,
waiting, waiting, watching, watching,
and if now the prodigal should come
home, what a scene of gladness and fes-
tiyity, and how the great Fathers heart
would rejoice at your coming home.
You will come, some of you, will you
not? You will, you will.
| notice also that when a prodigal
comes home there is the joy Of the min
listers of religion. Oh, it is a grand
thing to preach this gospel 1 know
there has been a great deal said about
the trials and the hardships of the Chris
tian ministry, I wish somebody would
write a good ronsipg book about the
lows 30 %l@ ~1sx- H.