Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-23
GREATEST DOMINION.
The Breadth of Our Continent En-
plOyed as an Illustration Of
A WORLD UNDER ONE SOVEREIGN.
DR.. Talmage's Sunday Morning Sermon
Fall of Word Painting.
HE WOULD TAKE IN ALL TERRITORIES


the crowded throngs at the Brooklyn Taber
nacle this morning, where the Rev. 7. D
Witt Talmage, D. D., preached as usual
The opening hymn was:
Nomore let human blood be split
Vain sacrifice for human guilt;
But to each conscience be applied
The blood that flows from Jesus side.
The subject of the sermon was, "Fron
Ocean to Ocean, or My Transcontinenta
Journey" Text: Psalms lxxii, s: "H,
shall have dominion from sea to sea-" Tht
preacher said:
What two seas are referred to? Somt
might say that the text meant that Chris
was to reign over all the land between
the Arabian Sea and Caspian Sea, or be-
tween the Red Sea and the Mediterranean
Sea, or between the Black Sea and the
North Sea. No; in such case my text
would have named them. 1t meant from
any large body of water on the earth clear
across to any other large body of water.
And so L have a right to read it: He shall
have dominion from the Atlantic Sea to the
Pacific Sea. My theme is, America for
Godl
First, consider the immensity of this pos
session. If it were only a small tract of
land capable of nothing better than sage
brush and with ability only to support
prairie dogs, 1 should not have much en-
thusissm in wanting Christ to have it added
to His dominion. But its immensity and
af1uence no one can imagine unless, in i'm
migrant wagon or stage coach or in rail
train of the Union Pacific or the Northern
Pacific or the Canadian Pacific or the
Southern Pacific, he has trayersed it.
OUR VAST CONTINENT.
Having been privileged six times to cross
this continent, and twice this. summer, 1
have come to some appreciation of its mag
nitude. California, which I supposed in
boyhood from its size on the map, was few
yards across, a ridge of land on which one
must walk cautiously lest he hit his head
against the Sierra Nevada on one side or
slip off into the Pacific waters on the other,
California, the thin slice OF land as 1 sup
posed it to be in boyhood, have found it to
be larger than all the States of New En-
gland and all New York State and all
Pennsylvania added together; and if you
add them together their square miles fall
far short of California.
North and South Dakota, Montana and
Washington Territory, to be launched next
winter into Statehood, will be giants at
their birth. Let the Congress of the United
States strain point and soon admit also
Idaho and Wyoming and New Mexico.
What is the use keeping them out in the
cold any longer? Let us have the whole
continent divided into States with Sena
torial and Congressional representatives
and we will all be happy together. If
some of them have not quite the requisite
number of people, fix up the Constitution
to suit these cases. Even Utah will by
dropping polygamy soon be ready to enter
MonOgamy has triumphed in parts of Utah
and will probably triumph at this fall cleo
ton in Salt Lake City.
Turn all the Territories into States and if
some Of the sisters are smaller than the
elder sisters, give them time and they Will
soon be as large as any of them. Because
some of the daughters of a family may be
five feet in stature and the others only iour
feet, do not let the daughters five feet high
shut the door in the faces of those who are
only four feet high. Among the dying
utterances of our good friend, the wise
statesman and great author, the brilliant
orator and magnificent soul, S. S. Cox was
the expressed determination to move next
winter in Congress for the transference of
other Territories into States.
THE DESERT TO BE RECLAIMED.
"But," says someone, sin calculating the
lmmenslty of our continental acreage you
must remember that vast reaches of our
public domain are uncultivated, heaps of
dry sand, and the bad lands of Montana
and the great American desert" 1 am
glad you mentioned that. Within 25 years
there will not be between the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts a hundred miles of land not
reclaimed either by farmers pillow or miners
crowbar. By irrigation, the waters of the
rivers and the showers of heaven in what
are called the rainy season will be gathered
into great reservoirs and through aqueducts
let down where and when the people want
them. Utah is an object lesson. Some
parts of that territory which were SO barren
that spear of grass could not have been
raised there in a hundred years are now
rich as Lancaster county farms of Pennsyl-
vania or Westchester farms of New York or
Somerset county farms of New Jersey.
Experiments have proved that ten
acres of ground irrigated from waters
gathered in great Psychological basins will
- proouce as much as fifty acres from the
downpour of rain as seen in our regions.
We have our freshets and our droughts, but
in those lands which are to be scientifically
irrigated there will be neither freshets nor
droughts. As you take pitcher and get it
full of water, and then set it on a table and
take drink out of it when u are thirsty,
and never think of drinking pitcherful ali
at once, so Montana and Wyoming and
Idaho will catch the rains of their rainy
season and take up all the waters of their
rivers in great pitchers of reservoirs, and
drink out of them whenever they will and
refresh their land whenever they will.
IMMENSE IRRIGATION ALREADY.
The work has already been grandly begun
bv the United States Government Over 400
lakes have already been officially taken pos
session of by the nation for the great enter
prise of irrigation. Rivers that have been
rolling idly through these regions, doing
nothing on their way to the sea, will be las
seed and corraled and penned up until such
time as the farmers need them. Under the
same processes the Ohio, the Mississippi and
all the other rivers will be taught to behave
themselves better, and great basins will be
made to catch the surplus of waters in times
of freshet and keep them for times OF drought.
The irrigating process by which all the arid
lands between the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans are to be fertilized is no new expert
ment. 1t has been going on successfully
hundreds of years, in Spain, in China, in
India, in Russia, in Egypt.
About 800, 900, 600 of people of the earth
to-day are kept alive by food raised on irri-
gated land. And here we have allowed to
lie waste, given up to rattlesnake and bat
and prsirie dog, lands enough to support
whole nations of industrious population.
The work begun will be consummated.
Here and there exceptional lands may be
! snI1 -rrho honf n