Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1899-08-17

l
rext street.-The allopathic and honeo
| pathlc doctors have given him up and hi.
friends now standing around to take his
last words is no more certainly dying az
| to his body than you and l are dying unless
we have taken the medicine from Gods
apothecary. All the leaves of this Bible
| are onlv so many prescriptions from the
Divine Physician, written, not in Latin.
like the prescripti )ns Of earthly physicians
but written In plain English, so that
"man, though fool, need not err therein
| Thank God that the Saviours garments
smell OF cassia!
Suppose man were sick, and there was
a phial on his mantelpiece with medicine
he knew would cure him, and he refused
to take 1t, what would you say OF him?
He Is a suicide. And what do you say OF
that man who, sick in sin, has the healing
medicine Of Gods grace offered him and
refuses to take It? If he dies, he Is sui
| eide. People talk as though God took a
man and led him out to darkness and
death, as though He brought him up to tho
| cliffs and then pushed him off. Oh, mol
When man is lost, 1t Is not because God
! pushes him off; it is because he jumps off.
In clden times suicide was buried at the
crossroads, and the people were accus-
| toned to throw stones upon his grave.
| SO 1t seems to me there may be at this time
q man who is destroying his soul, and as
though the angels Of God were here to
bury him at the point where the roads OF
1
upon the grave the broken law and great
| pile Of misimproved privileges, so that
those going by may look at the fearful
mound and learn what suicide it is when
m immortal soul, for which Jesus died,
| put Itself out of the way.
According to my text, He comes "out OF
| the ivory palaces" You know, or il you
do not know will tell you now, that some
| OF the palaces of oil len time were adorned
with ivory. Ahab and Solomon had their
I. ..l.u
African and Asiatic elephants were twisted
into all manner Of shapes, and there were
stairs OF ivory, and chairs Of ivory, and
| tables OF ivory, and floors OF ivory, and
pillars OF ivory, and windows OF ivory. and
fountains that dropped into basins of
| ivory, and rooms that had ceilings OF
ivory. Oh, white and overmastering beau
| ty! Green tree branches sweeping the
| white curbs. Tapestry trailing the snowy
floors. Brackets of light flashing on the
lustrous Surroundings. Silvery music rip
ping on the beach OF the arches. The
mere thought of it almost stuns my brain,
and you say: "Oh, If l could only have
walked over such floors! III could have
thrown myself in such a chair! II I
could have heard the drip and dash OF those
fountains!" You shall have something bet
ter than that IL YOU only let Cnrist intro
duce you. From that place He came, and
to that place He proposes to transport you.
for His garments smell OF myrrh and aloes
and cassia out OF the ivory palaces" What
| u place heaven must be! The Tuileries OF
the French, the Windsor Castle OF the Eng
| lish, the Spanish Alhambra, the Russian
Kremlin, are mere dungeons compared with
! It! Not so many castles on either side the
| Rhine as on both sides of the river of God
the ivory palaces! One for the angels,
| insufferably bright, winged, fire eyed, tenn
pest charioted; one for the martyrs, with
| blood red robes from under the altar; one
for the King, the steps of His palace the
| crown Of the church militant; one for the
singers, who lead tho IA, 900; one for you,
ransomed from sin; one Tor me, plucked
from tho burning. oh, the ivory palaces!
To-day 1t seems to me as II the windows
of those palaces were ilumined for some
great victory, and l look and see, climbing
| the stairs of ivory and walking on floors OF
| ivory, some whom we knew and loved on
eurth. Yes, I know them. There are
father and mother, not eighty-two years
and seventy-nine years, as when they left
us, but blithe and young as when on their
marriage day. And there are brothers and
sisters, merrier than when we used to
romp across the meadows together. The
cough gone. The cancer cured. The
erysipelas healed. The heart break over.
Oh, how fair they are in the ivory palaces!
And your dear little children that went
| out from you-Christ did not let one of
them drop us He lifted them. He did
not wrench one Of them from you. No
!
to one whom they loved better. II
should take your little child and press its
soft face against my rough cheek, might
keep it a little while, but when you, the
mother, came along, it would struggle to
go with you. And so YOU stood holding
your dying child when Jesus passed by in
the room, and the little one sprang out to
greet Him. That is all. Your Christian
dead did not go down into the dust and
the gravel and the mud. Though it
rained all that funeral day, and the water
came up to the wheels hub as yol drove
out to the cemetery, it made no difference
to them, for they stepped from the home
here to the home there, right into the
ivory palaces. All is we'll with them. All
Is we'll.
1t is not dead weight that you lift when
you carry Christian out. Jesus makes
the bed up soft with velvet promises, and
He says: "Put her down here very gently.
Put that head which will never ache again
on this pillow OF hallelujahs. Send up
| word that the procession Is coming ring
the bells. Ring! Open your gates. ye
ivory palacesl'' And so your loved ones
are there. They are just as certainly there,
having died in Christ as that you are here.
| There is only one thing more they want.
Indeed, there is one thing in heaven they
have not got. They want 1t. What is ii?
Your company. But, on. my brother, un-
less you change your tack you cannot
reach that harbor. You might as we'll take
the Southern Pacific Railroad, expecting in
that direction to reach Toronto, as to go
on In the way some OF you are going, and
yet expect to reach the ivory palaces.
Your loved ones are looking out OF the
windows of heaven now, and yet you seem
to turn your back upon them.
| When think of that place and think OF
my entering it, feel awkward. / feel as
sometimes when have been exposed to
tho weather, and my shoes have been be-
mired, and my coat is soiled, and my hair
is disheveled and stop in front of some
fine residence where have an errand. l
feel not fit to go in as am and sit among
the guests. So some of us feel about
heaven. we need to be washed; we need
to be rehabilitated before we go into the
ivory places. Eternal God, let the surges
of Thy pardoning mercy roll over US.
want not only to wash my hands and my
feet; but, like some skilled diver, standing
on the pier head, who leaps into the wave
and comes up at Il far distant point from
where he went in, SO / want to go down,
md so want to come up. o Jesus, wash
me.in the waves OF Thy salvation!
Aud here ask You to solve mystery