Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1890 — THE WIDE OPEN DOOR. [ARTICLE]

THE WIDE OPEN DOOR.

A DOOR THROUGH WHICH ALL _______ ; All Mysteries Unveiled by a Glance Througblts Portals—No Latch for Even Deatn to Obstruct tbe Way— Dr. Tatmage’s Sermon. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject, “The Wideopen Door.” Text, Rev. iv:l. He said: * John had been the pastor of a church in Ephesus. He had been driven from his position in that city by an indignant I>bpulace. The preaching of a pure and earnest gospel had made an excitement dangerous to every form of “iniquity. This will often be the result of pointed preaching. Men will flinch under the sword strokes of truth. You ought not to. be surprised that the blind man makes an outcry of pain when the surgeon removes the cataract from bis eye. It is a good sign when you see men uneasy in the church pew and exhibiting impatience at some plain utterance of truth which smites a pet sis ihat they are hugging to their hearts. After the patient has been so low that for weeks he said nothing, it is thought to be a good sign when he begins to be a little cross. And so I notice that spiritual invalids are in a fair way for recovery when they bebome somewhat irascible and choleric under the treatment of the truth. But John had so mightily inculpated public iniquity that he had been banished from his church, and sent to Patmos, a desolate island, only a mile in breadth, against whose rocky coasts the sea rose and mingled its voice with the prayers and hymnings of the heroic exile. You can not but contrast the condition of this banished apostle with that of another famous exile. Look at the apostle on Patmous and the great Frenchman on St. Helena. Both were suffering among desolation and barrenness because of offenses committed. Both had passed through lives eventful and thrilling. Both had been honored and despised. Both were imperial .natures. Both had been turned off to die. Yet mark the infinite difference: one had fought for the perishable crown of worldly authority, the other for one eternally lustrous. The One had marked his path with the bleached skulls of his followers, the other had introduced peace and good will among men. The one had lived chiefly for self-aggrandizement, and the other for the glory of Christ. The successes of the one were achieved amid the breaking of thousands of hearts and the acute, heaven-rending cry of orphanage and widowhood, while the triumphs of the other made joy in heave® among the aDgels of God. - The heart of one exile was filled with iremorse and despair, while the other was lighted up with thanksgiving and inextinguishable hope. Over St. Helena gathered the 1 blackness of dari&aess, clouds lighted up by no sunrising, but rent and fringed and heaving with the' lightning of a wrathful God. " What a dull spot upon which to stand and have such a glorious vision? Had Patmoß been some tropical island arbored with the luxuriance of perpetual summer and drowsy with the: breath of cinnamon and cassia, and tesselated with long aisles of geranium and cactus, we would not have been surprised at the splendor of the vision. But the last place you would go to if you wanted to find beautiful visions would be the island of Patmos. Yet it is around such gloomy spots that. God. makes the moat wonderful revelations. It was looking through the awful shadows of a prison that John Banyan saw the gate of the celestial city. God thero divided the light from the darkness. In that gloomy abode, on scraps of old paper picked up about his room, the great dream was written. It was while John Calvin was a refugee from bloody persecution and was hid in a house at Angouleme. that he conceived the idea of writing his immortal “Institutes.” Again: The announcement of such an opened entrance suggests the truth that God is looking down upon the earth and observant of all occurrences. If we would gain a wide prospect we climb up into a tower or mountain. The higher up we are - the broader the landscape we behold. Yet our most comprehensive view is limited to only a few leagues—here a river and there a lake and yonder a mountain peak. But what must be the glory of the earth in the eye of Him who, from the door of heaven, beholds at one glance all mountains and lakes and prairies and oceans, lands besprinkled with tropical gorgeousness and arctic regions white with everlasting snows. Lebanon, majestic with cedars, and American wilds solemn with unbroken forests of pine; African deserts of glistening sand, and wildernesses of water unbroken by ship's keel; continents covered with harvests of wheat ■dne^the^ho^Vrld heaven is opened that there is f entrance for jour prayers and t seeni that 6nr weak wfee has 1 strongih enough to climb - up to God’s ear. Shall hot our prayer ba lost in the wouds? words wings? The truth is plain. Heaven’s door is wide up with the strength W stout lungs? . Must it not be a loud ealL such as dsowiilng mm utter, o* like the shout ’of some chieftain in the battle? No; a whisker. U as good a* And Jfct mere Wlshbf the eOtfl hi jfrofouad net|i jt

rises just as high and accomplishes just as much. But ought not prayer to be made up of golden words if it is to enter, such a spienflid door and iive beside seraphim and archangel? Ought not every phrase to be rounded into perfection, ought not the language be musical, and dassic, and poetic, and rhetorical? No, the most illeterate outcry, the unjointed petition, the clumsy phrase, the sentence breaking into grammatical blunders, an unworded groan, is just as effectual, if it be the utterance of the soul’s want. A heart all covered up with garlands of thought would be no attraction to God, but a heart broken and contrite, that is the acceptable sacrifice. ‘‘l know that my Redeemer liveth,” rising up in the mighty harmony of a musical academy, may overpower our ear and heart, bdt it will not reach the ear of God like the broken-voiced hymn of some sufferer amid rags and dosolation looking up trustfully to a Savior’s compassion, singing amid tears and pangs. “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” I suppose that there was more rhetoric and classic elegance in the prayers of the Pharisee than of the publican, but you know which was successful. You may kneel with complete elegance on some soft cushion at an altar of alabaster, and utter a prayer of Moltonic sublimity, ..but neither your graceful posture nor the roll of your blank verse will attract heavenly attention, while over 6ome dark cellar, in which a Christian pauperis prostrate in the straw, angels bend from their thrones and cry one to another: “Behold, he prays! ” Through this open door of heaven what a long procession of prayers is continually passing! What thanksgiving! What confessions! What intercessions! What beseechings! “And behold a door was opened in heaven.” Again: The door of heaven is opened to allow us the opportunity of looking in. Christ when He came from heaven to Bethlehem, left it open, and no one since has dared to shut it. Matthew threw it still wider open when he came to write, and Paul pushed the door further back when he spoke of the glory to be revealed, and John in Revelation actually points us to the harps and the waters, and the crowns, and the thrones. There are profound mysteries about that blessed place that we can not solve. But look through this wide open door of heaven and see what you can see. God means us to look and catch up now something of the rapture, and attune our hearts to its worship. It is wide open enough to see Christ. Behold Him, the chief among ten thousand, all the bannered pomp of heaven at hfs feet. With your enkindled Jaith look up along these ranks of glory. Watch how their palms wave and hear how their voices ring. Floods clapping their hands, streets gleaming with gold; uncounted multitudes ever accumulating in number and ever rising up into glad-Hasannas. If you can not stand to look upon that joy for at least one hour how could you endure to dwell among it forever? You would wish yourself out of it in three days, and choose the earth again or any other place where it was not always Sunday. • My hearer in worldly prosperity, affluent, honored, healthy and happy, look in upon that company of redeemed and see how the poor soul in heaven is better off than you are, brighter in apparel, richer in estate, higher in power. Hearers afflicted and tried, look in through that open door that you may see to what gladness and glory you are coming, to what life, to what richness, to what royalty. Hearers pleased to fascination with this world, gather up your souls for an appi&ciatLve look upon riches that never fly away, upon health that never sickens, upon sceptres that never break. upon expectations that are never disappointed. Look in and see if there are not enough crowns 4o pay us lotall our battles, enough rest to relieve all our fatigues, enough living fountains to quench all our thirst, enough glory to dash out forever and ever all earthly sighing and restlessness and darkness. Battles ended, tears wiped away, thorns plucked from the bosoms, stabs healed, the tomb riven—what a spectacle to look upon! Again: The door of heaven stands open for the Christian’s final entrance. Death to the righteous is not climbings tfigh' walls Of fording- deep rivers, but it is entering an open door. If you ever visit the old homestead where you were born and while your father and mother are yet alive, as you go up the lane in front of the farm house and you put your hand on the door and raise the latch, do you shudder with fear? No; you are glad to enter. So your last sickness will be only the lane In your Father’s house, and from which you can hear the voice of singing before you reach the door. And death, that is the lifting of the latch before you enter the greetings and embraces of the innumerable family of the righteous. Nay, there is no latch, for John says the door is already open. What a company of spirits have already opened those portals, bright and shining. Souls released from the earthly prison house, how they shoutad as they went through! Spirits that sped up to the flames of martyrdom making heaven richer as they went In, pouring their notes into the celestial harmony. And that door has not begun to shut If redeemed by grace, we shall enter it. This side of it we have wept hut on the other side of It we shall never weep. On this side we may have grown sick with weariness, but on .the other side we shall be without fatigue. On this side we bleed with the warriors wounds, bn the other side we shall have'the victor’s palm. When you think of dying what makes your tfrow contract what makes you breathe so deep and sigh? What makes you gloomy in passing's graveyard? Follower of Christ* yon have

b en thinking that death is something terrible, the, measuring of lances with a powerful Antagonist, the closing in of a conflict which may be your everlasting defeat You do not want much to think of dying. The step beyond this life seems so mysterious you dread the taking of it Why, who taught you this lesson of horrors? Heaven’s, door is wide open, and you step out of your Sick room into these portals. Not as long as a minute will elapse between your departure and your arrival there. Not half as long as the twinkling of an eye. Not the millionth part of an instant. There is no stumbling into' darkness. There is no plunging down into mysterious depths. The door is open. The instant you are here, the next you are there. When a vessel struck the rocks of the French coast, while the crew were clambering up the beach, a cage of birds in the ship’s cabin, awakened, began to sing most sweetly, and when the last man left the vessel they were singing yet. Even so’ in the last hour of desolution, when driven on the coast of the other world, disembarkation from this rough, tossing life be amid the enternal singingof a thousand promises and deliverance and victory. For all repenting and believing souls the doer is now wide open, the door of merey, the door of comfort, for th© poorest as well as the wealthiest, for the outlaw as well as for the moralist, for Chinese coolie as well as his Emperor, for the Russian poor, as well as the Czar, for the Turk as well as the Sultan. Richer than all wealth, more fresher than all fountains,- deeper than all depths, heigherthan all heights and broader than all breadths in the salvation of Jesus Christ which I press upon your consideration- Come all ye travelers of the desert under these palm trees. Oh, if I could gather before you that tremendous future upon which you are invited to enter —dominions and principalities, day without night, martyrs under the throne and the four and twenty elders falling before it, streatching off in great distances the hundred and forty and four thousand, and thousands of thousands, host beside host, rank beyond rank, in infinite distance, nations of the saved beyond nations of the saved, until angelic visions cease to catch anything more than the faint outline of whole empires yet outstreaching beyond the capacity of any vision save the eye of God Almighty. Then after I had finished the sketch, I would like to ask you if that place is not grand enough, and high enough, and if anything could be added, any purity to the whiteness of the robes, any power to the acclaiming thunders of its worship.. And all that may be yours. ij