The Brookhaven leader., 1890-11-06
S0DOM AND GOM0RRAH.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage's Fifth
Sermon Of the Holy Land Series.
Thoughts Suggested by Contemplation
OF the Dead Sea-The Power of God
to Punish, Not Alone Individu-
al, but National Sin.

The fifth OF the series OF discourses
on the Holy Land was delivered by Rev.
T. Dewitt Talmage in Brooklyn and
New York City, from the text:
He toucheth the hills and they smoke
Psalm CIV, S2
David, the poet, here pictures vol
cano and what Church's Cotopaxi does
| on painters canvas, this author does in
words You see 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 it rise thick
vapors. intershot with fire. ''He touch
eth the hills and they smoke"
God is the only being who can man.
| age a 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
Jared into architectural exquisiteness,
was at the foot of the mountain up the
bluco VI "IlCu ~ Win NlAcJ dIuS
and villas of merchant princes, and all
that marble and bronze and imperial
baths, and arborculture and rainbowed
fountains and coliseum at
the dedication of which nine thousand
beasts had been slain and a supernal
landscape in which the shore gave roses
to the sea, and the sea gave crystals 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
the year 70, on the 4th of August,
black column rose above the adjoining
mountain and spread out, Pliny says,
as he saw it, like great pine tree,
wider and wider, until it began to rain
upon the city, first thin ashes, and
then pumice stone, and sulphur
Gus 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 en-
balmed in the scori@ of that awful
doom. The Lord called upon volcanic
forces to obliterate that profigate city.
1AO OOuSuCu WIG hAlLo bhCI
Nothing but volcano action can ex-
plain what / shall show you at the
Dead Sea, upon which l looked last De-
| cember, and of whose waters l took
bitter and singing taste. Concerning
all that region there has been a con-
troversy enough to fill libraries, science
saying one thing, revelation saying an
| other thing. But admit volcanic action
Divinely employed and both testimonies
are one and the same. Geology, chem
istry, geography, astronomy, ichthyolo-
gy, 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 to-day 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 sulphurous atmosphere
of Lake Asphaltites, 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.
Take detour and pass along by the
rocky fortress of Masada, where oc-
Cured something moro wonderful in
the way of desperation than you have
over 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 thousand in
eluding their families, afterward held
the fortress. When the Roman army
stormed that steep and the bandits
could no longer hold the place, their
chieftain Eleazar, made a powerful
speech which persuaded them to die be-
fore they were captured. First the
men kissed their families loving and
fearful goodbye and then iput dag
ger 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
tho survivor committed suicide Two
selves, and after all was over came forth
to tell of the nine hundred and sixty
slaughtered. Great and rugged natural
scenery makes the most tremendous
natures for good or evil Great states
men and great robbers, great orators
and great butchers, were nearly all lorn
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
Masada, the scene of concentrated
diabolism, and come along where the
salt crystals craekle 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 bewitchmentso of beauty.
Luzerne 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 the Sea of the Plain, and Josephus
calls Lake Asphaltites. The muleteers
will take care of the horses while we get
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
percentage of salt than those Of the
Atlantic ocean, the ocean having four