Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-03-01
WINGS OF SERAPHIM,
DR.. TAtMAGE'S PRACTICAL SERMON
UPON AN EXALTED THEME.


He Urges His Hearers to Aspire to Ely
Upward Dying, lie Says. Is but the
Melting Season Eor the Soul Living
Near Christ.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23.-In this dis
rourse DIR. Tal1nage takes a most exalted
theme and makes it practical ard useful
TO the last degree. The subject is
wings of Seraphim," and the text is
Isaiah vi, z, with twain he covered his
face, and with twain he covered his feet,
and with twain he did fly"
In a hospital Of leprosy good King
Uzziah had died, and the whole land
was Swallowed with solemnity, and the
illogical and prophetic Isaiah was think
ing about religious things, as one is apt
to do in time of great national bereave-
ment, and forgetting the presence of his
wife and two sons, who made up his
family, he has q dream not like the
dreams of ordinary character, which
generally come fro indigestion, but a
vision NEST instructive, and under the
touch of the hand of the Almighty.
The place, the ancient temple-build-
ing grand, awful, majestic. Within that
temple a throne higher and grander
than that occupied by any car or sui
tan or emperor. On that throne, the
eternal Christ. In lines surrounding
that throne, the brightest celestials, not
the cherubim, but higher than they, the
most exquisite and radiant of the heav-
emily inhabitants-the ~seraphim. They
are called burners because they look like
ire-lips of fire, eyesof fire, feet of fire.
In addition TO the features and the limbs,
which suggest a human being, there are
pinions which suggest the llthest, the
swiftest, the most buoyant and the most
aspiring of all unintelligent creation-a
bird. Each seraph had six wings, each
two of the wings for a different purpose.
Isaiah's dream quivers and flashes with
these pinions, now folded, now spread,
now beaten in lOcomotion. with twain
he covered his feet, with twain he COW
cred his face, and with twain he did
fly"
were not all used at once. The seraph
standing there neal the throne, over
whelmed at the insignifcance of the
paths his feet had trodden as compared
with the paths trodden by the feet of
God, and with the lameness of his loco
motion amounting almost to decrepitude
as compared with the divine velocity,
with feathery veil of angelic modesty
hides the feet. with twain he did
cover the feet"
Standing there, overpowered by the
overwhelming splendors of Gods glory
and unable longer with the eyes to look
upon them and wishing those eyes
shaded from the insufferable glory, the
pinions gather over the countenance.
"With twain he did cover the face"
Then, as God tells this seraph to go to
the farthest outpost of immensely on
message of light and love and Joy and
get back before the first anthem, it does
not take the seraph a great while to
spread himself npCn the air with unim-
agined celebrity, n stroke of the wing
equal to 10, 900 leagues of air. "With
twain he did fly"
Humility and Inperfection.
The most practical and useful lesson
for you and me, when we see the seraph
spreading his wings over the feet, is the
lesson of humility at imperfection. The
brightest angels of God are SO far be-
meath God that he charges them with
July, l16 6EIdEn 80 1dI DCuedIu 0CQ
and we SO far beneath the seraph in
service we ought to be plunged in HUI
mility, utter and complete. Our feet,
how laggard they have been in the di-
vine servicel Our feet, how many mis-
they have takeni Our feet, in how
many paths of worldliness and folly
they have walkedl
Neither God nor seraph intended to
put any dishoner upon that which is one
of the masterpieces of Almighty God
the human foot. Psychologist and anat-
are overwhelmed at the won
ders of its organization. The Bridge
water treatise, written by Sir Charles
Bell, On the wisdom and goodness of
God as illustrated in the human hand,
was a result of the $40, 600 bequeathed
in the last will and testament of the
Earl of Bridgewater for the encourage
ment of Christian literature. The world
could afford to forgive his eccentricities,
he had two dogs seated at his
table and though he put six dogs alone
Ia an equipage drawn by four horses
and attended by two fOOtmen.
With his large bequeSt inducing Sir
Charles Bell to write SO valuable a book
on the wisdom of God in the structure
Of the human hand, the world could af-
ford to forgive his oddities. And the
world could now afford to have another
Earl of Bridgewater. however idiosyn-
if he would induce some other
Sir Charles Bell to write a book on the
and goodness of God in the con-
struction of the human foot, the artic-
of its bones, the fabrication of
it's joints, the gracefulness of it's lines,
the ingenuity of it's cartilages, the deli
cacy of its veins, the rapidity of its
contraction, the sen~sitiveness