army. I look out upon fourteen hundred millions of the
race; and then I look at this fortress, and I say that there is room
enough for all. If it had been possible, this salvation would have
been monopolized. Men would have said: "Let us have all this to
ourselves--no publicans, no plebeians, no lazzaroni, no converted
pickpockets. We will ride toward heaven on fierce chargers, our feet
in golden stirrups. Grace for lords, and dukes, and duchesses, and
counts. Let Napoleon and his marshals come in, but not the common
soldier that fought under him. Let the Girards and the Barings come
in, but not the stevedores that unloaded their cargoes, or the men who
kept their books." Heaven would have been a glorified Windsor Castle,
or Tuileries, or Vatican; and exclusive aristocrats would have
strutted through the golden streets to all eternity.

Thank God, there is mercy for the poor! The great Doctor John Mason
preached over a hundred times the same sermon; and the text was: "To
the poor the Gospel is preached." Lazarus went up, while Dives went
down; and there are candidates for Imperial splendors in the back
alley, and by the peat-fire of the Irish shanty. King Jesus set up His
throne in a manger, and made a resurrection day for the poor widow of
Nain, and sprung the gate of heaven wide open, so that all the
beggars, and thieves, and scoundrels of the universe may come in if
they will only repent. I can snatch the knife from the murderer's hand
while it is yet dripping with the blood of his victim, and tell him of
the grace that is sufficient to pardon his soul. Do you say that I
swing open the gate of heaven too far? I swing it open no wider than
Christ, when He says: "Whosoever will, let him come." Don't you want
to go in with such a rabble? Then you can stay out.

The whole world will yet come into this refuge. The windows of heaven
will be opened; God's trumpet of salvation will sound, and China will
come from its tea-fields and rice-harvests, and lift itself up into
the light. India will come forth, the chariots of salvation jostling
to pieces her Juggernauts. Freezing Greenland, and sweltering
Abyssinia, will, side by side, press into the kingdom; and transformed
Bornesian cannibal preach of the resurrection of the missionary he has
slain. The glory of Calvary will tinge the tip of the Pyrenees; and
Lebanon cedars shall clap their hands; and by one swing of the sickle
Christ shall harvest nations for the skies.

I s