The Red Cloud chief., 1889-11-08
To H HOLY LAND.
Rev. 7. Dewitt Talmage Addresses
the Public Through the Press.
Vessels Of the Olden Time and the Present
The Christians Journey Over Lies
Blll0ws The Voyage to Heaven
Farewell Greetings.

addressed his friends through the press,
taking for his ext Acts XXX. IS: land
they accompanied him unto the ship
Following is the sermon:
To the more than $1,000, 900 people in
many countries to whom my sermons
come week by week, in English tongue
and by translation, through the kind
ness of the newspaper press, ! address
these words. l dictate them to a stem.
Ographer on the W. of my departure for
the Holy Land, Palestine. When you
read this sermon l will be in mid Allan.
tic. ! go to be gone a few weeks On a
religious journey. go because I want
for myself and hearers and readers to
see Bethlehem, and Nazareth. and Jeru-
sulem, and Calvary, and all the other
places connected with the S~aviOur's life
and death, and SO reinforce myself for
sermons. go also because l am writ
ing the Life of Christ" and can be
more accurate and graphic when l have
been an eye witness of the sacred places.
Pray for my successful j%Ourneying and
my safe return.
/ wish on the eve of departure to pro-
nOunce a loving benedictiOn upon all
my friends in high places and low, upon
congregations to whom my sermons are
read in absence of pastors, upon groups
gathered out on prairies and in mining
districts, upon all sick and invalid and
aged one who can not attend churches.
but to whom l have long administered
through the printed page. My next
sermon will be addressed to you from
Rome, Italy. for l feel like Paul when
he said: 80. as much as in me is, l am
ready to preach the gospel to you that
are at Rome also" The fact is that Paul
was ever moving about on land or sea.
lie was an old SailOr-nOt from Occupa-
ton. but from frequency of travel. !
think he could have taken a vessel
across the Mediterranean as we'll as
some of the ship captains. The sailors
never scOffed at him for being a LAND
lubber." If Paul's advice had been
taken the crew would never have gone
ashore at Melita. When the vessel went
scudding under bare poles Paul was the
only self-pOssessed man on board, and.
turning to the excited crew and despair
ing passengers, he exclaims, in a voice
that sounds above the thunder of the
tempest and the wrath of the sea: 'Be
Of good cheer
The men who now &c to sea with
maps and charts and modern compass,
warned BY buoy and lighthouse. know
nothing Of the perils of ancient naviga-
ton. Horace said that the man who
first ventured on the sea must have had
a heart bound with oak and triple brass.
People then ventured only from head
land to headland and from island to
island, and not long after spread their
sail for a voyage across the sea. Before
starting, the weather was watched, and
the ship having been hauled up on the
shore, the mariners placed their shout
ders against the stern of the ship and
heaved it of. they at the last m
leaping into it. Vessels were then
chiefly ships of burden-the transit of
passengers being the exceptions; for the
world was not then migratory as in our
day, when, the first desire of a man in
one place seems to be to get into another
place. The ship from which Jonah was
thrown overheard, and hat in which
Paul was carried prisoner, went out
chiefly with the idea of taking 4 cargo.
As now. SO then. vessels were accus-
toned to carry a flag. In those days it
was inscribed with the name of q
heather deity. A vessel bound for SYRIA
had on it the inscription Castor and
POllux." The ships were provided with
anchors. Anchors were of two kinds:
those that were dropped into the sea.
and those that were thrown up onto the
rocks to hold the vessel fast. This last
kind was what Paul alluded to when he
said: (Which hope We have as an an
Choir of the soul, both sure and stead
fast. and which entcreth into that with
in the vail" That was what the sailors
call a hook anchor" The rocks and
sand bars. shoals and headlands. not
being mapped out, vessels carried a
plumb line. They would drop it and
find the water fifty fathOms, and drop it
again and find it forty fathoms. and
drop it again and find it thirty fathoms.
thus discovering their near approach to
the shore. In the spring, summer and
autumn the Mediterranean sea was white
with the wings of ships, but at the first
wintry blast they hied themselves to
the nearest harbOr, although now the
worlds commerce prOspers in Janu-
airy as we'll as in June. and in midwinter,
all over the wide and stormy deep. there
float palaces of light. trampling the bill
lows under foot, and shOwering the
sparks Of terrible furnaces on the wild
wind; and the Christian passengers.
tippeted and shawled, sit under the
Of the smOke-stack. looking of
upon the phOsphOrescent deep. on which
is written in scrolls of foam and fire:
THY way, o God, is in the sea and thy
path in the great waters"
1t is in those days of early navigation
that l see q group of men. women and
children on the beach of the Mediter-
ranean. Paul is about to leave the con-
gregatiOn to whom he had preached and
they are come down to see him of. 1t
is a solemn thing to part. There are SO
many traps that wait for a mans feet.
The solid ground may break through.
and the sea-hOw many dark mysteries
it hides in its bosom! A few cOunsels, a
hasty goodbye. q last look, and the