News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1890-10-30
Dead Sea and Jordan.
Sermon Delivered by Rev. T. Dewitt
Talmage.

peated before an audience which filled
the vast building in every part. DR.
Talmage announced as his text Psalm
civ, 80: He toucheth the hills and
they smoke" He said:
David the poet here pictures a vol
cano, and what Church's Cotopax
does on painters canvas this author
does in words. You see a hill, calm
and still and for ages immovable, but
the Lord out of the heavens puts his
finger on the top of it and from il
rise thick vapors, undershot with fire.
He toucheth the hills and they
smoke"
GODS TREMENDOUS TOOLS.
God is the only being who can man
age volcano, and again and again
has he employed volcanic action. The
pictures on the walls of Pompeii, the
exhumed Italian city, as we saw them
last November, demonstrate that the
city was not fit to live. In the first
century that city, engirdled with pal
aces, emparadised with gardens, pill
lIllO
was at the foot of a mountain, up the
sides of which it ran with vineyards
and villas of merchant princes, and all
that marble and bronze and imperiaI
baths and arboriculture and rainbowed
fountains, and coliseum at the dedi-
cation of which nine thousand beasts
had been slain, and Il supernal land
scape in which the shore gave roses to
the sea and the sea gave crystals to the
shore; yea, aSl that beauty and pomp
and wealth could give was there to be
seen or heard. But the bad morals of
the city had shocked the world.
In the year 70, on the 4th of August,
n black column rose above the adjoin-
ing mountain and spread out, Pliny
says, as he saw it, like a great pine
tree, wider and wider, until it began to
rain upon the city, first thin ashes and
then pumice stone, and sulphurous
fumes scooped, and streams of mud
poured through the streets till few peo-
pie escaped and the city was buried,
and some of the inhabitants eighteen
hundred years after were found on
balmed in the scorie of that awful
doom. The Lord called upon volcanic
forces to obliterate that profiigate city
He touched the hills and they smoked.
Nothing but volcanic action can ex-
plain what | shall show you at the
Dead sea upon which | looked last De-
cember, and of whose waters | took a
bitter and singing taste. Concerning
all that region there has been contro-
versy enough to fill libraries, science
saying one thing, revelation saying an
other thing But admit volcanic ac-
ton divinely employed and both testi-
monies are one and the same. Geolo-
gy, chemistry, geography, astronomy,
ichthyology. ornithology and zoology
are coming one by one to confirm the
Scriptures Two leaves of one book
are Revelation and Creation, and the
penmanship is by the same divine hand.
Our horseback ride will not be so steep
today, and you can stay on without
clinging to the pommel of the saddle,
but the scenes amid which we ride
shall, if possible, be more thrilling, and
by the time the horses snuff the sui
phurous atmosphere of Lake Asphalt
ties or the Dead sea we will be ready
to dismount and read from our Bibles
about what was done that day by the
Lord when he touched the hills and
they smoked.
I1TrF
Take detour and pass along by the
rocky fortress of Masada, where oc-
CURED something more wonderful in
the way of desperation than you have
ever heard of. unless you have heard
of that Herod built palace amid
these heaps of black and awful rocks,
which look like tumbled midnight
A great band of robbers-about one
including their famiIies-af-
terward held the fortress. When the
Roman army stormed that steep, and
the bandits could no longer hold the
place, their chieftain. Eleazar, made
powerful speech, which persuaded them
to die before they were captured.
First the men kissed their families a
loving and fearful good-by and then
put a dagger into their hearts, and the
women and the children were slain.
Then ten men were chosen by lot to
slay all the other men, and each man
lay down by the dead wife and chill
dren and waited for these executioners
to do their work This done, one man
of the ten killed the other nine. Then
the survivor committed suicide Two
women and five children had hid them
selves and, after all was over, came
forth to tell of the nine hundred and
Sky slaughtered. Great and rugged
natural scenery makes the most ire
mendoas natures for good or evil.
great orators and great butchers were
nearly all born or reared among mount
ain precipices. Strong natures are
hardly ever born upon the plain.
When men have anything greatly good
or greatly evil to do they come down
off the rocks.
Pass on from under the shadow of
Nasada, the scene of concentrated di-
abolish, and come along where the salt
CRYSTALS crackle under the horses hoofs.
You IRE near the most Godforsaken
'egion of all the earth. You to whom
he word lake has heretofore suggested
hose bewitchments of beauty Luzerne
or Cayuga, some great pearl set by a
owing God in the bosom of the luxuri
mt valley, change all your ideas about a
axe, and see this sheet of water which
he Bible calls the Salt sea, or Sea of
he Plain, and Josephus calls Lake As
Qualities. The muleteers will take care
If the horses while we go down to the
brink and dip up the liquid mixture in
he palm of the hand The waters are
4 commingling of birthstone and pitch,
and have six times larger percentage of
salt than those of the Atlantic ocean,
the ocean having four per cent. of salt
md this lake twenty-six and a quarter
per cent.
Lake Sir-i-kol of India is the highest
axe in the world. This lake, on the
banks of which we kneel, is the lowest
AXE. 1t empties into no sea, among
other things for the simple reason that
water cannot run up hill. 1t swallows
up the River Jordan and makes no re-
'ponse of thanks, and never reports
what it does with the twenty million
cubic feet of water annually received
rom that sacred river. 1t takes the
rec branches and logs floated into it
by the Jordan and pitches them on
.he banks of bitumen to decay there.
The hot springs near its banks by the
name of Callirhoe, where King Herod