Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1894 — HEAVENLY JOYS. [ARTICLE]

HEAVENLY JOYS.

“There Is Rest for the Weary, There Is Rest for You.” immortal Pleasure* Await the Faithful Bellevrr—l>r. T -lmage’s Sermon lor the Press, r~r“ The Rev. Dr. Talmage, who is now nearing the close of his globe circling tour and will shortly reach American shores, selected as the subject of last Sunday’s sermon through the press, “Victory Over Pain,” the text chosen being Revelations xxi, 4, “Neither shall there be any more “para.” The fif'st questions fi you ask when you are about to change your residence to any city is: “What is the health of the place? Is it shaken of terrible disorders? What are the bills of mortality? What 1 is the death rate? How high rises the thermometer?” And am I not reasonable in asking, What are the sanitary conditions of the heavenly city to which we all hope to move? My text answers it by saying, “Neither shall there he any more pain.” Firs,!;, I remark, there will be no pain of disappointment in heaven. If I could put the picture'of wbak you anticipated of life when von liegan it beside the picture of what you have realized, I would find a great difference. You have stumbled upon great disappointments. Perhaps you expected riches, and have worked hard enough to gain them. You have plann :d and worried and persisted until your bauds were worn and your brain was'racked and your heart fainted, and at the end of this long strife with misfortune you find that if you have not been positively defeated it has been a drawn battle. It is., still tug and tussle, this year losing what you gained last, financial uncertainties pulling down faster than you build. For perhaps twenty or thirty years you have been running your craft straight into the teeth of the wind. Perhaps you have had domestic disappointment. Your children, upon whose education you lavished your hard earned dollars, have not turned out as expected. Notwithstanding all your counsels and prayers and painstaking they will not do right. Many a good father has had a bad boy. Absalom trod on David’s heart. Furtner, I remark, there will be ao pain of weariness. It may be many hours since, you quit work, but many of you are linrested, some from overwork, and some from dullness of trade, the latter more exhausting than the former. Your ankles ache; your spirits flag; you want rest. Are These wheels always to turn, these shuttles to fly, these axes to hew, these shovels to delve, these pens to fly, these books to be posted, these goods to be sold? Further, there will be no more pain or poverty. It is a hard thing to be really poor, to have your coat wear out and no money to get another, to have your flour barrel empty and nothing to buy bread with for your children, to live in an unhealthy row and no means to change your habitation, to have your child sick with some mysterious disease and not be able to secure eminent medical ability, to have son or daughter begin the world and you not any thing to help them in starting. with a mind capable of research and high contemplation to be perpetually fixed on questions of mere livelihood, Poets try to throw a romance about the poor man’s cot. but there is no romance about it. Poverty is hard, cruel, unrelenting. Further, there will be no pain of parting. All these associations must some time break up. We clasp our hands and walk together and talk and laugh and weep together, but We must after awhile separate. Your grave will be in one place, mine in another. We look each other full in the face for the last time. We will be sitting together some evening or walking together some day, and nothing will be unusual in our appearance or our conversation, but God knows it is for the last time, and messengers from eternity on their errand to take us away know it is the last time, and in heaven, where they make ready for our departing spirits, they know it is the last time. On every street, at every doorstep, by every couch, there have been partings. But once past the heavenly portals, and you are through with such, scenes forever. In that land there are many hand claspings and embracings, but only in recognition. The great home circle never breaks. Once find your comrades there and you have them forever. No crape floats from the door of that blissful residence. No cleft hillside where the dead sleep. Ail awake, wide awake, and forever No pushing out of emigrant ship for foreign shore. No tolling of bells as the funeral passes. Whol,? generations in gloay. Hand to hand, heart to heart, joy to joy. No creeping up the limbs of the death chill, the feet cold until hot flannels cannot warm them. No rattle of sepulchral gates. No parting, no pain. Further, the heaveniy city will have no pain of body. The race is pierced with sharp distresses. The surgeon’s knife must cut. The dentist’s pinchers must pull. Pain is fought with pain. * The world is a hospital. Scores of diseases, like vultures contending for a carcass, struggle as to which shall have it. Our natures are infinitely susceptible to suffering. The eye, the foot, the hand, with immense capacity or anguish. Pain has gone through every

street and up every ladder and down every shaft. ’ It is on the wave, on the mast, on Ahe beach. Wouuds from clip of elephants tusk and- adder’s sting and crocodile’s tooth and horse’s hoofs aad wheel’s revolution. We gather up the infirmities of our parents and transmit to our children the inheritance augmented by our own sicknesses, and they add to them their own disorders, to pass the inheritance to other generations. In A. D. 262 the plague in Rome smote into the dust 5,000 citizens daily. In 544. in Constantinople, T,OOO grave diggers were not enough.to bury the deajd. In 1813 opthalfhia seized the whole Prussian army. At times the earth has sweltered with suffering. Count up the pains of Austerlitz. where 30,000 fell; of Fontenov, where 100,000 fellr of Chalons, where 300,000 fell; of Marius's fight, in which 290,000 fell; of the tragedy at Herat, where Genghis Khan massacred 1,600,000 men, and of Misbar, where he slew 1,747,000 people; of the 18,009,000 this monster sacrificed in fourteen years, as he went forth to do, as he declared, to exterminate the entire Chinese nation, and make the empire a pasture for cattle. Think of the death throes of the 5,009,000 men sacrificed in one campaign of Xerxes.. Think of the 120,000 that perished iu the siege of Ostend, of 300.009 dead at Acre, of 1,100,000 dead in the siege of Jerusalem, of of 1,816,009 of the dead at Troy, and then complete the review by considering the stupendous estimate of Edmund Burke that the loss by war had been thirty-five times the entire then present population of the globe. Ah, the world has writhed in 6,000 years of suffering. Why doubt, the possibility of a future world of suffering when we see the tortures that have been inflicted in this? A deserter from Savastopol coming over to the armies of the allies pointed back to the fortress and said, “That place is a perfect hell.” But I have a glad sound for every sick room, for every lifelong invalid. for every broken heart. “Them shall be no more pain.” Thank God! Thank God! No malarias float id that street. No weary arm. Nil painful respiration. No hectlj flush. No ohe can drink of tha i healthy fountain and keep fain 9 hearted headed. Ho whose foot touches that pavernen !i beeometh an athlete. The first kisi of that summer air will take thd wrinkles from the old man’s cheek i Amid the multitude of songsters no y one diseased throat. The first flasli of the throne will scatter the dark I ness of those who were born blind. 1 See, the lame man leaps as a hart! and the dumb sing. From that bath of infinite delight we shall stej’ forth, our weariness forgotten. Wh are those radiant ones? Why, tha one had his jaw shot off at Prederl icksburg; that one lost his eyes in I powder blast; that one had his bad 1 broken by a fall from the ship’s hal l yards; that one died of gangrene id the hospital. No more pain. Sure enough, hefe is Robert Hall who never before saw a well day and Edward Payson, whose body was ever torn of distress, and Rich ard Baxter, who passed through un told physical torture. All well. Nc more pain. Here, too, are the Theban legion, a great host of 6,668 put) to the sword for Christ’s sake. No) distortion on their countenance. Not fires to luyrt them, or floods to drown them, or racks to tear them. AH well. Here are the Scotch Covenanters; none to hunt them now. The dark cave and imprecations of Lord Claverhouse exchanged for temple service, and the presence of him who helped Hugh Latimer out of the fire. All well. No more pain I set open the door of heaven until there blows on you this refreshing breeze. The fountains of God have made it cool, and the gardens have made it sweet. Ido not know that Solomon ever heard on a hot day the ice click in an ice pitcher, but he wroth as if he did when he said, “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” Clambering among the Green mountains I was tired and hot and thirsty, and I shall not forget how refreshing it was when after a while I heard the mountain brook tumbling over the rocks. I had no cup, no chalice, so I got down on my knees and face to drink. Oh, ye climbers on the journey, with cut feet and parched tongues and fevered temples, listeu to the rumbling of sapphire brooks, amid flowered banks, over golden shelvings! Listen! “The lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead then onto living fountains of water.” Ido not offer it to you in a chalice. To take this you must bend. Get down on your knees and on your face and drink out of this great fountain of God’s consolation. “And, 10, I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice ol many waters!”