Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1889-04-10
DIR TALMAeE's SERMON SUNDAY, MARCH 81

II ANsAs CITY, March 31.-The Rev. T.
NDe Witt Talmage preached sermon
here to-day on "Wouders of Disaste'
and Blessing his text being, 81 will show
wonders in the heavens and in the earth -
joel ii. 30. He said:
DR. Cnmming-great and good man
would have told Us the exact time OF the
fui6Iment of this prophecy AS l stepped
into his study in London on my arrival from
Paris inst after the French had surrender
ed at Sedan, the gond Doctor said to me:
alt ia irst as told you about France; peo
pie laughed at me becanse | Talked abou'
The sevpp horns ard the Vials. but fa' esH q
all this fl m The Box nf Daniel and the
Book of Revelation Not TAXI e any such
re- ponslbiliry in the Interpretation Of th'
passage, I simply assert that there IS in it
suggess ious of many things in our time.
Our ewes dilate and our heart quickens
it's pulsations as we read of events in the
third century, the sixth century, The eighth
century, the fourteenth century, but there
are more far reaching events crowded into
the nineteenth century than into any other,
and the last quarter bids fair 70 eclipse the
preceding three quarters We read iu The
daily newspapers of events announced il.
one paragraph and without any special EN-
phasis-of eveuts which a Herodatu8, a
J0seDhus, a XenopboD, Gibbon would
have taken whole chapters or whole vol
umes to elaborate. Looking out upon our
time, we must cry out in the words of the
text. "WondeIs in the heavens AID in the
earth "
| propose 10 show you that the time in
which we lYe is wonderful for disaster and
wonderful for blessing. for there must be
lights aud shades iu this picture as in all
Others Need l argue this day that our
time is wonderful for disaster? Our world
has had a rough time siuce by the hand OF
Gnd il was boeled out into space. 1t is an
epilepiic earth; convuls."n after conVulsion;
frosts pounding ii wish sledge hammer OF
iceberg. aud fires melting it with furnaces
seven hundred times heated, 1t is a won
der to me 1t has lasted SO long. Me,eors
shoot,ng bs on this side and grazing it, and
meten,s shooting by oD the other SIDE and
grazing it. note If them sln Hing up for
ssfe,y. Whole fleets AID navies and
argoses and flpt las of worlds sweeping all
about u.s. Our earth ike a fishing sm 4ck
if the barks If Newfoundland, while the
Etrurla aud GeImau'c and the Ariz ma aud
The Civ f New York rush by. Besides
that, our wcrld has by sin been damaged
in i,s iplerpai III cbinery and ever and anon
the furnaces bave bust. and tie walking
beams of he mountain have broken, anC
the islauds have shipped sea, and tht
great hulk of the world has been Jared
with accidents that ever and anon threat
ened immediate dissolution. But it seem,
to us as if our century were especially char
acterized by disaster-volcanic, cyclonic
oceanic epidemic. | say volcanic, because
an ea1th quake is only volcano hu>hed up
When S,romboli and Cotopaxi and Vasu
vius stop breathing let the foundations uf tb
earth beware. Seven Thousand cart, quake
in two centuries recorded in the catalogu
of the British association. Traian, tn
Emperor, goes to ancient Antioch, ant
amid the spleDdots of his reception he i
met by an eartt quake that nearly destroy
the Emperor s life. LISBON, far and beau
ifnl at o'clock on the 1st of November
1855, in SIX minutes 60, 900 have perisbed
and Voltaire writes Of them: 'For tha
region it was the Last Judgment no'hi
wanting but a trumpes!' Europe and Amer
| ioa feeling The thrnb-1, 500 chimueys il
Boston partly OF fully dt destroyed.
But the disasters uf other centuries hav
| had their counterpart in our own. In 18l
| SdT1aCC1S HdS CduGhb III S''p vi bu
earthquake; III 1922 in Chill, 100, 900 SONAR
miles of laud by volcanic force uphe .ved I
four and seven feet of permanent elevation
| in 1854 Japan felt the geological agon.
Naples shaken in 1857; Mexico in 1855
| Medosa, the capital nt he Argentine r,
| pubic. in 1861; Manila terrcilzad i'll 1863
the HewalIau ,slanas by such force upl'fss-
| let down in 1871; Nevada shaken in 1871
| A 1QrD. CuliF 1870. S.,l
| Salvador in 1878; while III 1883 what sui
terraneau excitement Iscbia, an islam
of the Mediterranean, beautiful Italia
watering place, vineyard clad, surrounde
by all natural charm and historical II
| ninircence; yonder, Capri, the summe
resort { f the Roman emperors; yonder, N
ples, the paradise of ars-this beautiful Is
land suddenly toppled into the trough {
the earth, s 900 merry makers perisbine
and some of them SO far down beneath tn
reach of human obsequies that t may
said of many one of ,hem as it was said {
Moses, The Lord buried him" Italy weeI
ing, weeping, all Europe, all ,Christer dol
weeping where there were hearts to syn
pathize and Christians to pray. But whi
the nations were measuring that magnituC
of disaster, measuring it nut with golde
rod like that which the angel measure
heaven, but with the black rule of dealt
Java. of the Indian archipelago, the mo
fertile island of all the earth, is caught
the grip of the earthquake, and mountai
after mountain goes down, and city afc
city, until that island, which produces Il
healtb biest beverage of all the world, b
produced the ghaslliest accident of the ce
tury. One hundred Thousand people, dyiu
, lying, dead, dead.
WHEN HEAVENS WINDS VISITED THE EAR7
ROUGHLY
But look at the disasters cyclOnic.
tn mon.b OF the G tgrs are three islsn