The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1898-04-27

exhausted himself in building this
world, and that all the rich. curtains he
ever made he hung around this planet,
and all the flowers he ever grew he
has woven into the carpet of our dai-
sled meadows No. This world is not
the best thing God can do; this world
is not the best thing that God has
done.
One week of the year is called bios
som week-called so all through the
land because there are more blossoms
in that week than in any other week
OF the year. Blossom week! And that
is what the future world is to which
the Christian is invited-blossom week
forever 1t is as far ahead of this
world as Paradise is ahead of Dry Tor
tugas, and yet we stand shivering and
fearing to go out, and we want to stay
on the dry sand, and amid the stormy
petrels, when we are invited to arbors
of jessamine and birds of paradise.
One season | had two springtimes.. l
went to New Orleans in April, and l
marked the difference between going
toward New Orleans and then coming
back. AS | went down toward New
Orleans, the verdure, the foliage be-
came thicker and more beautiful.
When came back. the further came
toward home the less the foliage, and
less and less it became until there was
hardly any. Now, it all depends upon
the direction in which you travel. If
spirit from Heaven should come to-
ward our world, he is travelling from
June toward December, from radiance
toward darkness, from hanging gar
dens toward icebergs. And one would
not be very much surprised if spirit
of God sent forth from Heaven toward
our world should be slow to come. But
how strange it is that we dread going
out toward that world when going is
from December toward June-from the
snow of earthly storm to the snow of
Edenic blossom-from the arctics of
trouble toward the tropics of eternal
joy.
Oh, what an ado about dying! We
get so attached to the malarial marsh
in which we live that we are afraid to
go up and live on the hilltop. We are
alarmed because vacation is coming.
Eternal sunlight, and best programme
of celestial minstrels and hallelujah,
no inducement. Let us stay and keep
cold and ignorant and weak. Do not
introduce us to Elijah, and John Mil
ton, and Bourdaloue. Keep our feet on
the sharp cobblestones of earth instead
of planting them on the bank of anna
ranth in Heaven. Give us this small
island of leprous world instead of the
immensities of splendor and delight.
Keep our hands full of nettles, and our
shoulder under the burden, and our
neck in the yoke, and hopples on our
ankles, and handouts on our wrists.
Dear Lord" we seem to say, keep us
down here where we have to suffer, in
| stead of letting us up where we might
live and reign and rejoice"
am amazed at myself and at your
self for this infatuation under which
we all rest. Men you would suppose
would get frightened at having to stay
in this world instead of getting fright
ened at having to go toward Heaven.
l congratulate anybody who has a
right to die. By that mean through
sickness you cannot avert, or through
accident you cannot avoid-your work
consummated. "Where did they | ury
Lily?" said one little child to another.
"Oh," she replied, "they buried her in
the ground" What! in the cold
ground?' "Oh, no, no; not in the cold
ground, but in the warm ground, where
ugly seeds become beautiful flowers" !"
But" says someone, lit pains me so
much to think that l must lose the
body with which my soul has so long
companioned." You do not lose it.
You no more lose your body by death
than you lose your watch when you
send it to have it repaired, or your
jewel when you send it to have it re-
set, or the faded picture when you
send it to have it touched up, or
the photograph of a friend when
you have it put in a new locket.
You do not lose your body. Paul
will go to Rome to get his, Pay
son will go to Portland to get his, Pres
ident Edwards will go to Princeton to
get his, George Cookman will go to the
bottom of the Atlantic to get his, and
we will go to the village churchyards
and the city cemeteries to get ours,
and when we have our perfect spirit
rejoined to our perfect body, then we
will be the kind of men and women
that the resurrection morning will
make possible.
So you see you have not made out
any doleful story yet, What have you
proved about death? What is the case
you have made out? You have made
out just this-that death allows us to
have perfect body, free of all aches,
united forever with perfect soul free
from all sin. Correct your theology.
What does it all mean? Why, it
means that moving day is coming,
and that you are going to quit
cramped apartments and be man
stoned forever. The horse that
stands at the gate will not be the one
lathered and bespattered, carrying bad
news, but it will be the horse that st.
John saw in Apocalyptic vision-the
white horse on which the king comes
to the banquet. The ground around
the palace will quake with the tires
and hoofs of celestial equipage, and
those Christians who in this world lost
their friends, and lost their property,
and lost their health, and lost their
life, will find out that God was always
kind, and that all things worked to-