Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1891 — BY-BY EGYPT. [ARTICLE]

BY-BY EGYPT.

A —• ? .0 A Sail Over the Waters Over Which St. Paul Sailed. Beautiful Earthly Scenery—Place of Celestial Landscapes—History Classi- . -eally Recited. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. The Doctor took two texts: Acts xxi, 3, ‘ ‘When we had discovered Cyprus we left it on the left hand;’ 7 and Revelations i. 9, ‘ ‘I, John * * * was in the isle that is called Patmos.” Good-by Egypt! Although interesting and instructive beyond any country in the world, except the Holy Land, Egypt was tome somewhat depressing. It was a postmortemexamination of cities that died 4,000 years ago. The mummies, or wrapped-up bodies of the dead, were prepared with reference to the resurrection day, the Egyptians departing this life wanting their bodies to be’kept in as good a condition sa possible so they wonlrl be presenta ble when they were called again to occupy them. But if when Pharaoh comes to resurrection he finds bis body looking as I saw his mummy in the Museum at Boulac his soul will become an unwilling tenant. The Sphinx also was to me astern monstrosity, a statue carved out of rock of red granite 62 feet high and about 143 feet long, and having the head of a man and the body of a lion.We sat down in the sand of the African desert to study it. With a cold smile it has looked down upon thousands of years of earthly history— Egyptian civilization, Grecian civilization, Roman civilization; upon the rise and fall of thrones innumerable; the victory and defeat of the armies of centuries. It took 3,000 years to make one wrinkle on its red cheek. It is dreadful in its stolidity. Its eyes have never wept a tear. Its cold ears have not listened to the groans of the Egyptian nation, the burden of. which I tried to weigh last Sabbath. Its heart is stone. It cared not for Pliny when he measured it in the first century. It will care nothing for the man who looks into its imperturble countenanceiu the last century. But Egypt will yet come up to the glow of life. The Bible promises it. The missionaries Jlike my friend, good and great Dr. Lansing, are sounding a resurrection trumpet above those slain empires. There will be some other Joseph at Memphis. There will be some other Mo-< ses on the Nile. There will be some other Hypatia to teach good morals to the degraded. • Instead of a destroying angel to slay the first-born of Egypt, the angel of the New Testament will shake everlasting life from his wings over a nation born in a day. Good-bye, Egypt! This sermon finds us on the steamer Minerva in the Grecian archipelago, the islands of the New Testament, and islands Paulinian and Johannian in their reminiscences. W T hat Bradshaw’s directory is to travelers in Europe, and what the railroad guide is to travelers-in America, the Book of the Acts in the Bible is to voyagers in the Grecian, or, as I shall call it, the Gospel Archipelago. The Bible geography of that region is accurate without a shadow of mistake. We are sailing this morning on the same waters that Paul sailed, but in the opposite direction to that which Paul voyaged. He was sailing southward and we northward. With him it was: Ephesus, Coos, Rhodes, Cyprus. With us it is reversed, and it is: Cyprus, Rhodes, Coos, Ephesus. There is no book in the world so accurate as the Divine Book. My text says that Paul left Cyprus on the left; we. going in the opposite direction, have.it on the right. On our ship Minerva were only two or three passengers beside our party, so we had plent y of room to walk the deck, and oh, what a night was Christmas night of 1889 in that Grecian Archipelago —islands of light above, islands of beauty beneath! It is a royal family of islands, this Grecian Archipelago; the crown of the world’s scenery set with sapph•re and emerald and topaz and chrys prasus, and ablaze with a glory that seems let down out of celeMial landscapes. God evidently made up his mind that just here he would demonstrate the utmost that can be done with islands for the beautification of earthly scenery. Questions of tariff, questions of silver bill, questions of republic or monarchy, have not so much to do with a nation’s temporal welfare as question’s of religion. Give Cyprus to Christ, give England to Christ, give America to Christ, give the world to Christ, and He will give them all a prosperity unlimited. Why is Brooklyn one of the qneen cities of the earth? Because it is the queen city of churches. Blindfold , me and lead me into any city of the earth so that I cannot see a street or a warehouse or a home, and then lead me into the churches and then remove the bandage from my eyes and I will tell you from what I* see inside the consecrated walls, having seen nothing Outside, what is that city’s merchandise, its literature, its schools, its printing presses, its government, its homes, its arts, its sciences, its prosperity or its depression, and ignorance, and pauperism and outlawry. The altar of God in the church is the high-water mark of the world s happiness. h Night came down on land and sea and the voyage became to ipe more and more suggestive and solemn. If you are pacing it aloye, a ship’s deck in the darkness and at sea is a weird place aud an active imagination may

conjure u{f almost any shappne will, and it shall walk the sea or confront him by the smokestack, or meet him under the captain's bridge. But here I was alone on ship's deck in the Gospel and do you wonder that the sea was populous with the past, and that down the ratlines Bible memories descended? Our friends had all gone to their berths. “Captain,” I said, when will we arrive at the island of Rhodes?” Looking out from under his glazed cap be responded in a sepulchral voice: “About midnight.” This island has had a wonderful history. With 6,000 Knights of St. John, it at one time stood out against 200,000 warriors under “Solymon the Magnificent.” The city had 3,000 statues and a statue to Apollo called Colossus, which has always since been considered one of the seven wonders of the world. It was twelve years in building and was seventy cubits high, and had a winding stair to the top. It stood fifty-six years, and then was prostrated by an earthquake. After lying in ruins for ni n e hundred years it was purchased to be converted to other uses, and the metal, weighing 720,000 pounds, was put on 900 camels and carried away. We were not permittee! to go ashore, but the lights all up and down the hills show where the city stands, and nine boats came out to take the freight and to bring three passengers. Yet all the thousands of years of its history are eclipsed by the few hours or days that Paul stopped there. As I stood there on the deck of the Minerva, looking out on the place where the Colossus once stood, “Ibethought myself of the fact that the world must have a god of some kind. ; A few cypresses and inferior olives pump a living out of the earth, and one palm tree spreads its foliage. But the barrenness and gloom, and loneliness of the island made it a prison for the prison banished Evan- ? elist. Domitian could not stand is ministry, and one day, under armed guard, that minister of the gospel stepped from a tossing boat to these dismal rocks, and walked up to the dismal cavern which was to be his home, and the place where should pass before him all the conflicts of coming time and all the raptures of a coming eternity. Is it not remark able that nearly all the great revelations of music and poetry, and religion have been made to men in banishment—Homer and Milton banished in blindness; Beethoven banished into deafness; Dante writing his Divina Commedia during the nineteen years of banishment from his native land; Victor Hugo writing his Les Miserables exiled from home and country O n the island of Guernsey, and the brightest visions of the future have been given to those who by sickness or sorrow were exiled from the outer world into rooms of suffering. Only those who have been imprisoned by very hard surroundings have had great revolutions made to them. So Patmos, wild, chill and bleak and terrible, was the best island in all the Archipelago, the best place in all the earth for divine revelations. Before a panorama can be successfully seen the room in which you sit must be darkened; and in the presence of John was to pass such a panorama as no man ever saw before or will ever see in this world, Jand hence the gloom of his surroundings was a help rather than a kinderance. i All the surroundings of the place affected St. John’s imagery when he speaks of heaven. St. John, hungry from enforced abstinence, or haying no food except that at which his appetite revolted, thinks of heaven ;and as the famished man is apt to dream of bountiful tables covered with luxuries, St. John says of the inhabitants of heaven. “They shall hunger no more.” Scarcity of fresh water on Patmos and the hot tongue of St. John’s thirst leads him to admire hoaven as he says, “They shall thirst no more. ” Again the panorama passes before the cavern of Patmos, and John the exile sees a mounted Christ on a snow-white charger leading forth the cavalry of heaven, the long line of white chargers galloping through the scene, the clattering of hoofs, the clinking of bridle-bits, and the flash of spears,all the earth conquered and all heaven in doxology And we halt again to rest from the spectacle. Again the panorama passes before the cavern of Patmos, and John the exile sees great thrones lifted, thrones of iflartyrs, thrones of apostles, thrones of prophets, of patriarchs, and a throne higher than all on which Jesus sits, and ponderous books are opened, their leaves turned over, revealing the names of all that have ever lived, the good and the bad, the renowned and the humble, the mighty and the weak, and at the turn of every leaf the unUer&e is in rapture or fright, and the sea empties its sarcophagus of all the dead of the sunken shipping, and the earth gives way and the heavens vanish. Again we rest a moment from the spectacle. The panorama moves on before the cavern of Patmos, and John the exile beholds A city of gold, and a river more beautiful than the Hudson or the Rhine rolls through it, and fruit trees bend their burdens on either bank, and all is surrounded by walls in which the upholstery of autumnal forests, and the sunrises and sunsets of all the ages, and th& glory of burning worlds seem to be commingled. And the inhabitants never breathe a sigh, or utter a groan, or discuss a difference, or frown a dislike, tor weep a tear. The fashion i they wear is pure white, and their I heads are encircled by garlands, and | they who were sick are well, and 1 they who were old are voung, and

they who were bereft a*e reunite I. And as the last figure of that panorama rolled out sight I think t iat John must have fa Jen back into his cavern, nerveless and exhaust Too much was it for naked eye to 1 >ok at. Too much was it for human strength to experience. My friends, I would not wonderaf you should have a very similar vision after a while. You will be through with this world, its cares and fatigues and struggles, aud if you have served the Lord and have done the best you could I should not wonder if your dying bed were a Patmos. It has often been so. I was reading of a dying boy who, while the family stood around sorrowfully expecting each breath to be the last, cried, “Open the gates! open the gates! Happy! Happy!” John Owen said in his last hour to his attendant, “Oh, Brother Payne, the long-wished for day is come at last!” Rutherford in the closing moment of his life cried out. ‘ T shall shine, I shall see Him as He is, and all the fair company with Him, and shall also have my large share. I have got the victory. Christ is holding forth His arms to embrace me. Now I feel! Now I enjoy! Now Ire joice! I feed on manna, I have angels’ food. My eyes will see my Redeemer. Glory, glory dwelleth in Imuafernuel’s land.” Yes, 10,000 times in the history of the world has the dying bed been made a Patmos. The time will come when you will be exiled to your last sickness as much as John was exiled to Patmos. You will go into your room not to come put again, for God is going to do something better and grander and happier for.you than IL has ever yet done! There will be such visions let down to your pillow as God gives to no man if he is ever to return to this .. tame world. The apparent feeling of uneasiness and restlessness at-the time of the Christian’s departure, the physicians say, is caused by no real distress. It is an unconscious and involuntary movement, and I think in many cases it is the vision of heavenly gladness too great for mortal endurance. It is only heaven breaking in on the departing spirit. You see your work will be done, and the time for yosr departure will be at hand, and there will be wings over you and wings under you, and your old father and mother gone for years, will descend into the room, and your children, whom you put away for the last sleep years ago, will be at your side, and their kiss will be on your foreheads, and you will see gardens in full bloom, and the swinging open of shining gates, and will hear voices long ago hushed. In many a Christian departure that you have known and I have known, there was in the phraseology of the departing ones something that indicated the reappearance of those long deceased. It is no delirium, no delusion, but a supernal fact.... Your glorified loved ones will hear that you arc about to come and they will say in heaven: “May I go down to show that soul the way up? May Ibe the celestial escort? May I wait for that soul at the edge of the pillow?” And the Lord will say; Yes, you may fly down on that mission.” And I think all your glorified kindred will come down, and they will be in the room, and although those in health standinground you may hear no voice, and see no from the heavenlyworld, you will see and hear. Anu the moment the fleshy bond of the soul shall break, the cry will be. “Follow me! Up this way! By this gilded cloud apast these' stars straight for home, straight for glory, straight for God!” As on that day in the Grecian ArchL ~gelago, Patmos began to fade out of sight. I walked to the stern of the ship in order that I might keep my eye on the enchantment as long as I could and the voice, that sounded out of heaven to John the exile in the cavern on Patmos seemed sounding in the waters that dashed against the side of our ship. “Behold the tabernacle of God is with meu and He will dwell with, them and they shall be His people and God himseft shall be with them and be their God. and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall fg> no more death, neither sorrow or prying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things arc passed away.”