The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-10-27
TALMAGE ON HIS TOUR.
HIS RIDE FROM JORDAN TO THE
DEAD SEA.

Ine Wlckedness OF Pompen - Vol
canic Action Responsible for the
Nature OF the Country at the Dead
Sea.
BROOKLYN. Oct 26.-Dr. Talmags
preached the fifth sermon Of the series ON
his tour in the Holy Land, in the Academy
Of Music, in this city this morning. This
evening at the Christian Herald service in
the Academy OF Music, New York, the SER
mon was repeated before an audience which
filed the vast building in every part. DR..
Talmage announced as his text Psalms civ.
50: HE toucheth the hills and they smoke"
lie said
David, the poet. here pictures volcano
and what Church's Cotopaxi does ON paint
er's canvas. this author does In words. You
see hill calm AID still and for ages i'm
movable, but the Lord out of the heavens
puts his finger on the top of it and from iT
rise thick vapors intershot with fire "He
toucheth the hills aud they smoke"
God Is the only being who can manage q
volcano and again and again has he en-
ployed volcanic action. The pictures ON
the walls of Pompeii. the exhumed Italian
city, as we saw them last November, dem
onstrate that the city was not fit to live.
In the first century that city, engirdled
with palaces, enparadised with gardens.
pillared into architectural exqul1teness.
was at the foot of "a mountain up the sides
or which IL ran with vineyards and villas
of merchant princes. and all that marble.
and bronza, and imperial baths, aud
arboriculture, and rainbowed fountains.
and coliseum at the dedication of which
nine thousand beasts had been slain, and
supernal landscape in which she shore
gave roaes to the sea and the sea gave crys-
tsls to the shore; yea. all 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 tho
year OF 10. on the 4th OF Angus a black
column rose above the adjoining mountains
and spread out, Pliny says, as he saw 1t,
like great pine tree, wider and wider,
until 1t began 10 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
people escaped and the city was buried, aud
some OF the inhabitants eighteen hundred
years after were found embalmed Ia the
scori@ 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 explain
what shall show you at the Dead Sea upon
which looked last December, and OF whose
Concerning all that region there has been a
controversy enough 30 ah libraries, sclonce
saying one thing, revelation saying another
thing But admit volcanic action divinely
employed and both testimonies are one and
the same. Geology, chemistry, geography,
as ronomy, ichthyology, ornithology aud
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 to-day and you can
stay on without clinEing to the pommel Of
the saddle, but the scenes amid which We
ride shali, II possible, be more thrilling aud
by the time the horses snuff the sulphurous
atmosphere Of Lake Asphaltites, or the
Dead Sea. we will be ready to dismount aud
read from our Bible about what was done
that day by the Lord when he touched the
hills and they smoked.
Take a detour and pass along by the rocky
fortress of MRsada where occurred some-
thing more wonderful In the way OF desper-
alton than you have ever heard OF, unless
you have heard OF that Herod built O
palace amid these heaps Of black and awful
rocks which look like tumbled midnight.
A great band Of robbers, about one thou
sand including their families, after ward
hold 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 per-
suaded them 10 die before they were capt
ured. Firsr the men kissed their families
a loving and fearful good-by and then put
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 children and waited fer these execu-
tioners 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 themselves,
and after all was over, came forth to tell Of
the nine hundred aud sixty slaughtered.
Great and rugged natural scenery makes
the most tremendous natures for good or
evil. Great statesmen aud great robbers,
great orators, aud great butchers, were
nearly all born or reared among mountain
precipices. Strong natures are hardly ever
born upon the plain. When men have any
thing greatly good or greatly evil to do
they come down Off the rocks.
Pass on from under the shadow Of Ma
sada, the scene of concentrated diabolism,
and come along where the salt crystals
crackle under the horses hoofs. You are
near the most God-forsaken region of all the
earth. You to whom the word lake has
heretofore suggested those bewitchments OF
beauty, Lucerne or Cayuga, some great
pearl set by loving God in the bosom OF
the luxuriant valley, change all your ideas
about lake. and see this sheet OF water
which the Bible calls the Salt sea,
or Sea Of the Plain, and Josephus
calls Lake Asphaltites. The muIeteers
will take care of the horses while we got
down to the brink and dip up the liquid
mixture in the palm Of the hand. The
waters are commingling Of birthstone
and pitch, and have six times larger per-
centage of salt than those of the Atlantic
ocean, the ocean having four per cent Of
salt, aud this lake twenty-six aud a quarter
per cent. Lake Sir-i-kol OF India is the
highest lake in the world. This lake, on
the banks OF which we kneel, is the lowest
lake. 1t empties into no sea, among other
things. for the simple reason that water
cannot run uphill. 1t swallows up the
river Jordan, and makes no response OF
thanks, and never reports what it does with
the twenty million cubic feet of water
annually received from that sacred river.
1t takes the tree branches and logs hoated
into it by the Jordan and pitches them on
the banks of bitumen TO decay there.
The hot springs near its banks BY the
name OF Callirhos, where King Herod came
10 bathe off his illnesses, no sooner pour into
this sea than they are poisonei. Not fish
scale swims it. Not an insect walks it. 1t
hates life, and il you attempt to swim there
it lifts you by an unnatural buoyancy to the
surface, as much as to say, we want no
life here but death is our preference-de death"
Those who attempt to wade into this lake.
and submerRe themselves, come out almost