Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-03-06

when your precious bundle of life shall
be opened in the ''house of many man
sions,'' amid sanity and angelic and
divine inspection The bundle may be
spotted with the marks of much ex-
posture, it may bear inscription after in
scription to tell through what ordeal it
has passed, perhaps splashed of wave
and scorched of fame but all it has
within unchanged of the journey. And
with what shouts of joy the bundle Of
life will be greeted by all the voices of
the heavenly home circlel
Welcome Awaits.
ID our anxiety at last to reach heaven
we are apt to lose sight of the glee or
welcome that awaits us if we get in at
ALL We all have friends up there. They
will somehow hear that we are coming.
Such close and swift and constant COM
munication is there between those up
lands and these lowlands that we will
not surprise them by sudden arrival If
loved ones On earth expect our coming
visit and are at the depot with carriage
to met US, surely we will be met at the
shining gate by old friends now sainted
and kindred now glorified. If there
were no angel of God to meet US and
show us the palaces and guide us to our
everlasting residence, these kindred
would show us the way and point out
the splendors and guide us to our celes-
tial home powered and fountained and
arched and illumined by a sun that
never sets. Will it not be glorious, the
going in and the settling down after
all the moving about and upsettings of
earthly experienced We will soon know
all our neighbOrs, kingly, queenly, pro-
| phetic, apostolic, seraphic, archangelic.
| The precious bundle of life opened amid
palaces and grand marches and accla-
nations. They will all be so glad we
| have got safely through. They saw US
| down here in the struggle. They saw
us when we lost our way. They knew
when we got off the right course. None
of the 80 ships that were overdue at
New York harbor in the storm of week
before last was greeted so heartily by
friends on the dock or the steam tugs
| that went out to meet them at Sandy
! Hook as we will be greeted in the heav-
emily world if by the pardoning and pro-
tecting grace of God we come to celes-
| tial wharfage We shall have to tell
them of the many wrecks that we have
passed on the way across wild seas and
amid Caribbean cyclones. 1t will be
like our arrival some years ago from
New Zealand at Sydney, people sur
prised that we got in at all, because we
were two days late, and some of the
ships expected had gone to the bottom.
and we had passed derelicts and aban-
doned crafts all up and down that awful
channel-our arrival in heaven all the
more rapturously welcomed because Of
the doubt as to whether we would ever
| get there at all.
| Gods Promise.
Once there it will be found that the
safety of that precious bundle of life
was assured because it was bound up
| with the life of God in Jesus Christ.
| Heaven could not afford to have that
| bundle lost because it had been said in
regard to its transportation and safe ar
rival, Except by the power of God
| through faith u1S5o complete salvation.
| The veracity of the heavens is involved
| in its arrival If God should fail to
keep his promise to just one ransomed
soul, the pillars of Jehovah's throne
would fall, and the foundations of the
eternal city would crumble, and infinite
poverties would dash down all the
chalices and close all the banqueting
halls, and the river of life would change
its course, sweeping everything with
! desolatiOn, and frost would blast all the
gardens, and unreasonable sickness
slay the immortals, and the new Jerus-
alem become an abandoned city, with
no chariot wheel on the streets and no
worshipers in the temple-a dead Pom
/ IL Il I, 81 ,1c,,
of the heavens. Lest any one should
doubt, the God who cannot lie smites
his omnipotent hand on the side of his
throne and takes affidavit, declaring,
GAS I live, saith the Lord God, have
no pleasure in the death of him that
dieth. Oh I cannot tell you how /
feel about it, the thought is so glorious.
Bound up with God. Bound up with
infinite mercy. Bound up with infinite
Joy Bound up with infinite purity.
Bound up with infinite might. That
thought is more beautiful and glorious
than was the heroic Abigail, who at
the foot of the crags uttered it, Bound
/ in the bundle of life with the Lord thy
Godl''
Now, my nearer and reader, appreci-
ate the value of that bundle. See that
it is bound up with nothing mean, but
with the unsullied and the immaculate.
Not with pebble of the shifting beach,
but with the kohinoor of the palace;
not with some fading regalia of earthly
pomp. but with the robe washed and
made white in the blood of the Lamb.
Pray as you never prayed before that by
divine chirography written all over your
nature you may be properly addressed
for glorious destination. Turn not
over a new leaf of the old book, but by
the grace of God open an entirely new