The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1889-04-12
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Disasters and Blessings and the
Lessons They Convey.
a Weird Catalogue of CaIamities and the
Contrasting blessings OF the Age
An Appeal to the Churches
for Union and Energy.

WONDERS Of Disaster and Blessine.n and
his text:
will show wonders in the heavens ana in
the earth.-JOel H., 80.
DR.. Cumming-great and good man
would have told US the exact time of the
fulhllment Of this prophesy. As / step
ped into his study in London on my arri-
val from Paris just after the French had
surrendered at Sedan, the good doctor
said to me: at is just as 1 told you
about France; people laughed at me be-
cause talked about the seven horns and
the walls, but foresaw all this from the
Book Of Daniel and the Book of Revela-
ton" Not taking any such possibility
IN the 1nterpre tation Of the passage, I
simply assert that there is in it sugges-
tons Of many things in our time. Our
eyes dilate and our heart quickens its
pulsauOns 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 to eclipse the preceding three-quar-
tiers. We read in the daily newspapers Of
events announced in one paragraph and
without especial emphasis-Of events
which HerodOtus, a JOsephusy Keno
phon, Gibbon would have taken whole
| chapters or whole volumes to elaborate.
Looking out upon time we must cry out in
the words Of the text: sWonders in the
heavens and in the earth.'
l propose to show you that the time in
which we live is wonderful for disaster
and wonderful for blessing, for there
must be lights and shades in this picture
as IN all others. Need I argue this day
that our time is wonderful for disaster?
Our world has had a rough time since by
the hand Of God it was bowled out into
10 -, Al.
sion after CONFUSION; Of iceberg and fires
melting it with furnaces seven hundred
times heated. 1t is a wonder to me it has
/ lasted so long. MetsOrs shooting by on
this side and grazing it, and meteors
shooting by on the other side and grazing
it, none of them slowing up for safety.
| Whole fleets and navies and argOsies and
aotillas of worlds sweeping all about us
Our earth like a fishing smack off the
banks Of Newfoundland, while the Etruria
and Germanic and the Arizona and the
City of New York rush by. Besides that,
our world has by sin been damaged in its
| internal machinery, and ever and anon
| the furnaces have burst and the walking
| beams Of the mountain have broken, and
the islands have shipped a sea and the
1 great hulk of the world has been Jared
with accidents that ever aud anon threat
] ened immediate demolition. BUTT seems
! to us as If our century were especially
| characterized by disaster, volcanic cy-
| clonic, oceanic, epidemic. I say volcanic,
because an earthquake is only volcano
hushed up. When StromboL and Coto-
paxi and Vesuvius stop breathing, let the
foundations of the earth beware. Seven
| thousand earthquakes in two centuries
recorded in the catalogue Gf tile British
Associatioui Trajah, the Emperor, goes
to ancient Antioch, and amid the splen-
doris Of his reception, is met by an earth
quake that nearly destroys the Emperor's
life.
Lisbon, fair and beautiful at one O'Clock
on the 1st of November, 1875, in six min
utes sixty thousand have persisted, and
Nolta1re writes Of them: For that re-
gion it was the last Judgment, nothing
wanting but trumpet" Europe and
America feeling the thrObl fifteen hun
dred chimneys in Boston partly or fully
destroyed. But the disasters of other
| centuries have had their counterpart in
/ our own. In 1872 Caracas was caught in
the grip Of an earthquake; in 1922, in Chilli,
/ one hundred thousand square miles of
/ land by volcanic force upheaved to four
/ and seven feet Of permanent elevation;
| III 1884 Japan felt the geological agony:
! Naples shaken in 1857; Mexico in 1853;
! Medosa, the capital of the Argentine Re-
public, 1871; Manila terrorized in 1868;
the Hawaiian Islands by such force up
! en- In ISL; Antioch in 1872; California in
1872; San Salvador in 1873; while in 1888,
| what subterranean Excitement
Ischia, an island Of the Mediterranean,
beautiful Italian watering-place, vine
yard clad, surrounded by all natural
! charm and historical "Reminiscences; yon-
der Capri, the summer resort of the Ro-
man emperors; yonder Naples, the para
/ disc of art-this beautiful island sudden
! ly tOppled into the trough of the earth,
eight thousand merry makers perishing,
and some Of them so far down beneath
the reach Of human Cbsequies that it may
! be said of many one of them as it was
! said OF Moses: "The Lord buried him."
/ Italy weeping, all Europe weeping, all
Christendom weeping where there were
hearts to sympathize and Christians to
pray. But while the nations were meas
uring that magnitude of disaster, measur-
ing it not with golden rod like that with
which the angel measured Heaven, but
with the black rale of death, Java, Of the
indian archipelago, the most fertile island
Of all the earth, is caught in the grip OF
the earthquake, aud mountain after
mountain goes down, and city after city,
until that island, which produces the
healthiest beverage Of all the world, has
produced the ghastliest accident of the
century. One hundred thousand people
dying, dying, dead, dead.
But look at the disasters oyclOnic. At
the mouth Of the Ganges are three islands
the Haitian, the Sundeep and the Dakin
Shabezpore. In the midnight of October,
1877, on oil those three islands the cry
was: ''The waters, the waters!" A cy-
clone arose and rolled the sea over those
three islands, and Of a population Of two
hundred and forty thousand, two hundred
and fifteen thousand we're drowned. Only
those saved who had climbed to the top Of
the t0llest trees. Did you ever see a cy-
cloneg Then pray God you may never
see one. 1 saw one on the ocean, and it
swept US eight hundred miles back from
our course, and for thirty-six hours dur
ing the cyclone and after it we expected
every moment to go to the bottom. They
told US before we retired at nine O'Clock
that the barometer had fallen, but at
eleven O'Clock at night we were awakened
with the shock of the waves. All the
LIGHTS OutI Crash! went all the life-b boats.
Waters rushing through the skylights
down into the cabin and down on the fur
uaces until they Missed and smoked in
the deluge. Several hundred people
praying, disappearing, shrieking. Our
great ship poised moment on the top OF
a mountain Of phosphOrescent fire and
then plunged down, down, Gown, until it
seemed as if she would never again be
righted. All! you never want to see
cyclone az sea. But I was in Minnesota
where there was one Of those cyclones on
land that swept the City of Rochester
from its foundations, and took dwelling
houses, barns, men, women, children,
horses, cattle, and tossed them into in
discriminate ruin, and lifted a rail train
and dashed it down, a mightier hand than
that Of the engineer on the air brake.
Cyclone in Kansas, cyclone in Missouri,
cyclone in Wisconsin, cyclone in Illinois,
nVpInma n ,H
power of the air, never made such cy-
clonic disturbances as he has in our dav.
And am / not right in saying that ono of
the characLeristics nE the time in which