Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1892 — SERAPHS’ WINGS. [ARTICLE]

SERAPHS’ WINGS.

A Characteristic Lesson ot Humiliation. This Is an Age of irreverence—Omnipotence Is the Tool With which God Hake. All Things. "V“ - - ■ During the past week Dr. Taimage has been preaching to enormous audiences in the great manufacturing towns of the English midland counties. The sermon selected for publication this week is on Isaiah vi,2: “With twain he covered his face, ,with twain he covered bis feet and with twain he did fly.” | Jaa hospital of leprosy good King XJzziah bad died and the whole land was Shadowed with solemnity, and theological and prophetic Isaiah was thinking about religious things, as one is apt to do in time of great national bereavement, and forgetting the presence of his wife and two sons who made up his family, he hast a dream, not like the dreams of ordinary character which generally come from indigestion, but a vision most instructive and under the touch of the hand of the Almighty. The piacSjthe ancient temple building, grand, awful, majestic. Within that temple a throne higher aud grander than that occupied by any czar or sultan or emperor. On that throne the eternal Christ. In lines surrounding that throne the brightest celestials, not the cherubim, but higher than they: the most exquisite aud radiant of the heavenly inhabitants, the seraphim. They are called burners because they look like fire. Lips of fire, eyes of fire, feet of fire. In additiou to the features and the limbs which suggest a human being there are pinions which suggest a jithest, the swiftest, the most buoyaut aud most inspiring of all inteliifent creation—a bird. Each seraph ad six wings, each two of the wings for a different purpose. Isaiah’s dream quivers and flashes with these pinions. Now folded, now. spread, now beaten in locomotion. “With twain he covered his feet, with twain ho covered his face, and with twain ha did fly,” The probahUity-ia that these wings were not aTTTfsea at once. The seraph standing there near the throne, overwhelmed at the insignificance of the paths trodden by the feet of God and with the lameless of his locomotion, amounting almost to decrepitude as compared with the divine velocity, with feathery veil of angelic modesty hides the feet. “With twain ho did cover his feet.”

Standing there overpowed by the overmatching splendors of God’s glory, and unable longer with the eyes to look upon them, and wishing those eyes shaded from the insufferable glory, the pinions gather over tho countenance. “With twain he did cover the face.” Then as God tells this seraph to go to the farthest outpost of immqiisity bn message of light and love and joy, and get back before the first anthem, it does not take the seraph a great while to spread himself upon the air with unitnaginod celerity, one stroke of tho wing equal to ten thousand leagues of air. “With twain he did fly.” 1 The most practical and useful lesj?son for you and me, when we gee thoseraph spreading his wings over the f.'et, is a lesson of humility at imperfection. Tho brightest angels of God are so far beneath God that he charges them with folly. The seraph so far beneath God, and we so far beneath the seraph in service, we ought to be plunged in humility, utter and camplete. Our feet, - h0.,laggard they, have been in the divine service! Our feet, how many missteps they have taken! Our feet, in how many paths of worldliness and folly they nave walked! Neither. God nor seraph intended to put any dishonor upon that which is one of the masterpieces of Almighty God—the human foot. Give me the history of your foot, and I will give you the history of your lifetime. Tell me what steps it hath gone, down what declivities and in what roads and in what directions, And I will know more about you than I want to know. None of us could endure the scrutiny. Another seraphic posture in the “With twain he covered the face.” How many take the name of God in vain, how many trivial things said agaipst the Almighty! Not willing to have God in the world, thev roll up an idea of sentimentality and humanitarianism and impudence and imbecility, and call it God. No wings of reverence over the face, no taking off of shoes on holy ground. You can tell from the way they talk they could havo made a better world than this, and that the God of the Bible shocks every sense of propriety. They talk of the love of God in a way that shows you they believe it docs uot make any difference how bad a man is here he will come in at the shining gate. They talk of the love of God in such a way which shows you they think it is a general jail delivery for all the abandoned and thescoundrelismof the universe. No punishment hereafter for any wrong done here. The Bible give* us two descrip i tions of God, and thev are Just op- ; posite, and they are both true. In one p’a :e the Bible says God is love. In another place the Bible says God is a consuming fire. The explanation is plain as plain can be. God through Christ is love. God out of Christ is fire. To win the one and to escape the other we have only to throw ourselves body, mind and koul— into Christ’s keeping, says Irreverence, T ‘l want no atouemeut, I want no pardon, I want no intervention; I will go up and face Gcd, and I will challenge him, and 1

will defy him, and I will ask him what he wants to do with me.” So the finite confronts the infinite, so a tack hammer tries to break a thunderbolt. so the breath of human nos- - defies the everlasting God, while the hierarchs of heaven bow the head and bend kflee as ~ the King’s chariot goes by, and the archangel turns away because he cannot endure the splendor, and the chorus of all the empires of heaven comes in with full diapason, “Holy, holy, holy!” Reverence for lham, reverence for the old merely because it is old, reverence for stupidity however learned, reverence for incapacity however finely inaugurated, have none. But we want more reverence for God, more reverence for the sacraments, more reverence for the Bible, more reverence for the pure, more reverence for the good. Reverence is a characteristic of ail great natures. Another seraphic posture in the text. The seraph must not always standstill. He must move, and it must be without clumsiness. There must be celerity and beauty in the movement. “With twain he did fly. ” Correction, exhilaration. Correction at our slow gait, for we only crawl in the service when we ought to fly at the divine bidding. Exhilaration in the fact that the soul has wings as the seraphs have jwingSrWhat’is a wing? -An instrument of locomotion. They may not be like seraph’s wing, they may not be like bird’s wing, but the soul lias wings. God says so. “He shall mount up on wings as eagles. ” We are made in the divine image, and God has wings. The Bible says so. “ Healing in his wings. ” - A dying Christian not long ago cried out, “Wings, wings, wings!” The air is full of them, coming and going, coming and going. You have seen how the dull, sluggish chrysalid becomes the bright butterfly; the dull and the stupid and the lethargic turn into the alert and the beautiful Well, my friends, in this world we are in a chrysalid state. Death will unfurl the wings. Ob, if we could only realize what a grand thing it will be to get rid of this old clod of the body and mount the heavens, neither seagull nor lark nor alba* tross ncr falcon nor condor pitching from highest range of Andes so buoyant or so majestic of stroke, See that eagle in the mountain nest. It lcolcs so sick, so ragged 1 feathered, so worn out and so half asleep. Is that eagle dying? No. The ornithologist will tell' jrou it is molting season with that bird. Not dying, but molting. You see that Christian sick and weary and worn out and seeming about to expire on what is known as his death bed. The world says he is dying. I say it is molting season for his soul—the body dropping away the celestial pinions coming on. iNot dying, but molting. Molting out of darkness and sin and struggle into glory and into God. Why do you not shout? Why do you sit shivering at the thought of death and trying to bold back and wishing you could stay here forever, and speak of departm’e as though the subject were filled with skeletons and the varnish of coffins, and as though you preferred lame foot to swift wing? O, people of God, let us stop playing the fool and prepare far raptur-

ous flight. When your soul stands on the verge of this life, and there are vast precipices beneath, and sapphired domes above, which way will you fly? Will you fly downward or will you fly upward?' Everything on the wing this morning bidding us aspire. Holy spirit on the wing. Anglo of the new covenant on the .wing, Time OB the wing, flying away from Eternity on the wing, flying toward us.' Wings, wings, wings! Live so near to Christ that when you are dead, people standing by your lifeless body will not soliloquize, saying, “What a disappointment life was to him; how averse he was to departure; what a pity it was he had to die; what an awful calamity!” Rather standing there may they see a sign more vivid on your still face than the vestiges of pain, something that will indicate that it was a happy exit—the clearance from oppressive quarantine, the castoff chrysalid, the moltiDg of the faded and useless, and the ascent from malarial valleys to bright, shiniDg mountain tops, and be led to say, as they stand there contemplating your humility and your reverence in life and {our happiness in death. “With twain e covered the feet, with twain he covered the face, with twain he did fly.” Wings! Wings! Wings!