Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1894 — A TALMAGIAN DREAM. [ARTICLE]

A TALMAGIAN DREAM.

Tho Eloquent Brooklyn Divine in a NoW 'Role; —t —— His Impression* of Heaven and the Great Beyond—Pr. Talmagc’s Sermon. Rev. T. DeWitt. Talmage preached at Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday on the topic of "A Vision of Heaven.” the text being Ezekiel i. 1, "‘Now it came to pass as I was among the captives by the river of C,hebar that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” Expatriated" and in far exile on the banks of the river Chebar, an affluent of the Euphrates, sat Ezekiel. It was there he had an-immortal dream, and it is given to us in the holy scriptures. He dreamed of Tyre and Egypt. He dreamed of Christ and the coming heaven. This exile, seated bv that river Chebar had a more wonderful dream than you or I ever had or ever will have seated on the banks of the Hudson or Alabama or Oregon or Thames or Tiber or Danube - _. r Such a dream 1 had this morning! It was 5:30. and the day was breaking. It was a dream of Gqd—a dream of heaven. Ezekiel had his dream on the banks of the Chebar. I had mv dream not far from the banks of the Hudson. The most of the stories of heaven were written many centuries ago, and they tell us how the place looked then or how it will look centuries ahead. Would you not like to know how it looks now? That is what 1 am going to tell you. 1. was there this morning. I have just got back. How I got into that city of the sun I know not. Which of the twelve gates I, entered is to me uncertain. But mv first remembrance of the scene is that I stood on one of the main avenues, looking this way and that, lost in raptures, and the air so full of music and redolence and laughter and light that I knew not which street to take, when an angel of God accosted me and offered to show me the objects of greatest interest, and-to conduct jme from street to street, and from mansion to mansion, and from tera- ! pie to temple, and from wall to wall. I said to the angel, “How long hast I thou been in heaven?” and the an- ' swer came, “Thirty-two years, acI cording to the earthly calendar.”

There was a secret about this angel’s name that was not given me, but from the tenderness and sweetness and affc-clion and interest taken in rny walk through heaven, and more than all in the fact of thirtvtwo years’ residence—the number of years since she ascended —I think it was my mother. Old age and decrepitude and the tired look were all gone, but I think it was she. You see, I was only on a visit to the city, and had not vet taken up residence, and I could know only in part. I looked in for a few moments at the great temple. Our brilliant and lovely Scotch essayist, Mr. Drummond, says there is no church in , heaven, but he did not look on the right street. St. John was right when in his Patmosic vision, recorded in the third chapter of Revelation, he speaks of “the temple of God.” I saw it this morning—the largest church I ever saw, as big as all the churches and cathedrals of the earth put together. And it was thronged. Oh, what a multitude! I had never seen so many peopl e - together. All the audiences of all the churches of all the earth put together would make a poor attendance compared with that assemblage. There was a fashion in attire and head-dress that immediately took my attention. The fashion was white. All in white save one. And the head-dress was a garland of rose and lily and . mignonette, mingled with green leaves culled from the royal gardens and bound together with bands of gold. And I saw some young man with a ring on the finger of the right hand and said to my accompanying angel, “Why those rings on the fingers of the right hands?” and I was told that those who wore them were prodigal sons and once fed swine in the wilderness and lived on husks, but they came home, and the rejoicing father said, “Put a ring on his hand.”

But I said thei*e was one exception to this fashion of white pervading all the auditorium and clear up through all the galleries. It was the attire of the one who presided in that immense temple the chiefest, the mightiest, the. loveliest person in all the place. His\cheeks seemed to be I flushed with infinite beauty and his lips were eloquence omnipotent. But his attire was of deep colors. They suggested the carnage through which he had passed, and I said to j my attending angel, “What is that ; crimson robe he wears?" and I was ! told. “They are dyed garments from | Bqzrah,” and “He trod 'the' wine press alone.” Soon after I entered this temple ' they began to chant the celestial litany. It was unlike anything I had over heard for sweetness or power, and 1 have heard the most of the gi cat organs and the most of the oratories, t said to my accompanying angel, “Who is that standing yonder with the harp?” and the answer was, “David.” And I said, “Who is that sounding that trumpet?" and the answer. 4 was, “Gabriel." And I said, “Who is that at the organ?” and the answer was “Handel." And the music rolled on till it came to a doxology extolling Christ himself, when ail the worshipers lower down and higher up, a thousand galleries of them, suddenly dropped on their knees'and chanted, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” Under the

overpowering harmony I foil back, I said: “Let us go. This is too much for mortal ears. I cannot bear the overwhelming symphony.” But 1 noticed as 1 was about'to turn away teat on the steps of the altar was something like the lachrymal, or tear bottle, as f. had seen ft In the earthly museum*, the lachrymals, or tear bottles, into which ' the used to weep their griefs and set tjieru away as sacred. But. this ’lachrymal, or tear bottle, instead of earth, a ware as those the j orientals used, was lustrous ami fiery, with many splendors, and it was towering and of great capacity. And j I said to my aHendiug angel. “ What is that great lachrymal, or tear bottle, standing on. the step of, the ~al* tar?” and the angel said: “Whv, do you not know? That is the bottle to which David, the psalmist, referred in his fifty-sixth psalm when he said, ‘Put thou my tears into thy bottle.' It is full of tears from earth—tears of repen*mice, tears of bereavement, tears of joy, tears of many centuries.” And then I saw how sacred to the sympathetic God are earthly sorrows, As I was coming out of the temple T saw all aiong the pictured wails there were shelves, and golden viais were being set up on all those shelves. And I said, “Why the setting up of those vials at this-time? They seen just now to have been filled.” And the attending angel said: “The week of prayer all around the earth, has just closed, and more

supplications have been made than have been made for a longtime, and these new vials, newly set up. are what the Bible speaks of as ‘golden stars full of odors, which are the prayers of saints.'” And I said to the accompanying angel, “Can it be possible that the pravers of earth are worthy of being kept in such heavenly shape?” “ Why," said the angel, “there is nothing that so moves heaven as the prayers of earth, and they are set up in sight of these infinite multitudes, and. more than all, in sight of Christ, and he cannot forget them, and they are bWire him world without end.” say some of my hearers, “did you see alivthingof our friends in heaven?” Oh. yes, I did. “Did you see my children there?” says some one, * : and are there any marks of their last sickness still upon them?” I did see them, and there was no pallor, no cough, no pain, no fever, no languor about them. They told me to give their love to you, that they thought of you hour by hour, and that when they could be ! excused from heavenly playgrounds | they came down and hovered about ! you, -and kissed your cheeks, and j filled your dreams with their glad I faces, and that they would be at the | gate to greet you when you aseend- | ed to be with them so.-ever. “ But,” say other voices, “did you see our glorified friends?” Yes, 1 saw them, ana they are well in the land across which no pneumonias or palsies or dropsies or typhoids ever sweep. The aroma blows over from | orchards with trees bearing twelve ! manner of fruits, and gardens corti- ! pared with which Chatsworth is a | desert. The climate is a mingling j of an earthly June and October, the ! balm of one and the tonic of the j other. The social life in that realm ; where they are is superb and per- ; feet. No controversies or jealousies ! or hates, but love, universal love, ! everlasting love. And they told me j to tell .you not to weep for them, ' for their happiness knows no bound, and it is only a question of time : when you shall reign with them in i the same palace and join with them j in the same exploration of planets ; and the same tour of worlds. AS I walked through those streets I appreciated for the first time what j Paul said to Timothy, “If we suffer iwe shall also reign with Him.” It | surprised me beyond description j that all the great of heaven were j great sufferers. “Not all?” Yes, i all. Moses, him of the Red sea, a j great"sufferer. David, him of Absa-

lorn’s unfilial behavior aifd Ahithophel’s betrayal and a nation’s dethronement, a great sufferer. Ezekiel, him of the captivity, who had the dream on the banks of the Chebar. a great sufferer. Paul, him of the diseased eyes, and the Mediterranean shipwreck, and the Mars Hill derision, and the Mamertine endungeonment, and the whipped back, and the headman’s ax on the road to I Ostia, a great sufferer. Yea, all the aposties after lives of suffering died i by violence, beaten to death with fullers’ clnbs or dragged to death by mobs, or from the thrust of the sword, or by exposure on barren island, or by decapitation. My walk through the city explained a thousand things on earth that had been to me inexplicable. When I saw up there the superior delight and the superior heaven of j many who had on earth had it hard with cancers and bankrupeies and | persecutions and trials of all sorts, I ! said: “God has equalized it all at j last. Excess of enchantment in ' heaven Jias more than made up for the deficit? on earth.” Reflection the first: The superiority of our heaven to all other heav- ! ens. The Scandinavian heaven: The 1 departed are in everlasting battle except as restored after being cut to pieces. They drink wine out of the skulls of their enemies. The Moslem heaven as described by the Koran: “There shall be houris with large black eyes like pearls hidden in their shells." The Slav’s heaven: After death the soul hovers six weeks about the body then climbs a steep mountain, on ,the top of which is paradise. The Tasmanian’s heaven: A spear is placed by the dead that they may have something to fight with, and after a while they go into a long chase for game of all

sorts. The Tahitian’s heaven: The departed are eaten up of the gods. The native African heaven: A land of shadows, and in speaking of the departed they say, “All is done forever.” The American aborigine's heaven: Happy hunting groiTsds,to Which ! the soul goes on a bridge of snakes. The philosopher's heayen: Made out of a thick fog or an indefinite don’t know. But harken an l behold our heayen, which, though mostly described by figures of speech in the Bible and by parable of a dream in this discourse, has for its chief characteristics separation from all that is vile, absence from all that can discomfort, presence of all that can gratify. No mountains to climb, no chasms to bridge, no night to illumine, no tears to wipe. Seandluavlanheaven. Slav’s heaven. . Tasmanian heaven. Tahitian heaven. Moslem heaven. African heaven. Aborigines’ heaven, scattered into tameness and disgust by a glimpse of St. John’s heaven, of Paul’s heaven, of Christ's heaven, of your heaven, of mv heaven. . Reflection the second: You had better take patiently and cheerfully all pangs, affronts, hardships, persecutons and trials of earth, since if rightly born they insure heavenly payments of eestacy. Every twinge of physical distress, every lie told about you, every earthly subtraction if meekly born,, will be heavenly addition. If you want to amount to anything in heaven and to move in its best society you must be “perfected through suffering.” The only earthly currency worth anything at the gate of heaven is the silver of tears. At the top of all heaven sits the greatest sufferer, Christ of the Bethlehem caravansary and of Pilato’s’dyer and terminer and of the Calvarean assassination. Oh, ye of the broken heart, and the disappointed ambition, and the shattered fortune, and the blighted life, take comfort from what I saw in m.v Sabbath morning dream. Reflection the third and last: How desirable - that' we all get there! Start this moment with prayer and penitence and faith iu Christ, who came from heaven to earth to take us from earth to heaven.