Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-11-06

SICKNESS! we're you nOVerlnS any
where around us when we plunged
into that memorable accident? Did
yOu know of our backsliding? Did
you know of that moral victory? Were
you pleased when we started for
heaven? Did you celebrate the hour
of our conversion? And then, wheth-
er they know it or not, we will tell
them all. But they will have more to
tell us than we to tell them.
Ten years on earth may be very
eventful, but what must be the biogra-
ply Of ten years in heaven? They will
have to tell us the story of coronations,
story of news from all immensely, sto-
ry of conQuerors and hierarchs, story
Of wrecked or ransOmed planets, StO-
ry of angelic victory over diabolic re-
volts, of extinguished suns, of oblit-
Grated consultations, of new galaxies
kindled and swung, of stranded COM
cts, of worlds on fire, and story of Je-
hOvah's majestic reign. If in that fam
lily room of our Fathers house we have
so much to tell them of what we have
passed through since we parted, how
much more thrilling and arousing that
which they have to tell us of what they
have passed through since we parted!
Surely that family room will be one
Of the most favored rooms in all our
Fathers house. What long lingering
there, for we shall never again be in a
hurry! "Let me open a window" said
a humble Christian servant to Lady
Raffies, who, because of the death Of
her child, had shut herself up in a
dark room and refused to see any one.
''You have been many days in this
dark room. Are you not ashamed to
grieve in this manner when you ought
to be thanking God for having given
you the most beautiful child that ever
was seen, and, instead of leaving him
in this world till he should be worn
with trouble, has not God taken him
to heaven in all his beauty? Leave off
weeping and let me open a window"
So today am trying to open upon the
darkness of earthly separation the win
dows and doors and rooms of the
heavenly homestead. 'In my Fathers
house are many rooms"
Rooms For All.
How would it do for my sermon to
leave you in that family room today !?
/ am sure there is no room in which
you would rather stay than in the en-
raptured circle of your assembled and
glorified kinsfolk. We might visit 9TH
er rooms in our Fathers house. There
may be picture galleries penciled not
with earthly art, but by some process
unknown in this world, preserving for
the next world the brightest and most
stupendOus scenes of human history,
and there may be lines and forms of
earthly beauty preserved for heaven
ly inspection in something whittier and
chaster and richer than Venetian
sculpture ever wrought-roomS beside
rooms, rooms over rooms, large rooms,
majestic rooms, opalescent rooms,
amethystine rooms. 'In my Fathers
house are many rooms"
hope none of us will be disappoint-
ed about getting there. There is a
room for us IL we will go and take it,
but in order to reach it it is absolutely
necessary that we take the right way,
and Christ is the way, and we must
enter at the right door, and Christ Is
the door, and we must start in time,
and the only hour you are sure of Is the
hour the clock now strikes, and the
only second the one your watch is now
ticking. l hold in my hand a roll of
letters inviting you all to make that
your home forever. The New Tesla
ment is only roll of letters inviting
you, as the spirit of them practically
says: "My dying yet immortal child in
earthly neighborhoOd, I have built for
you a great residence. 1t is full of
rooms. 1 have furnished them as no
palace was ever furnished. Pearls are
nothing, emeralds are nothing, chryso-
prasus is nothing, illumined panels of
sunrise and sunset nothing, the aurora
of the northern heavens nothing, COM
pared with the splendor with which /
have garnitured them. But you must
be clean before you can enter there,
and so have opened a fountain where
you may wash all your sins away.
Come now! Put your weary but
cleansed feet on the upward pathway.
Do you not see amid the thick foliage
on the heavenly hilltops the old family
homestead" GIN my Fathers house
are many rooms"