The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1890-11-12
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN
DAY SERMON.
Subject: "The Dead Sea and the
River Jordan"

TEXT: "a certain man ,vent do,on from,
Jerusalem to Jericho."-Luko x, 80.
David the poet here pictures a volcano, and
what Church's CotopaM does on painters
canvas this author does in words. You see
hill, calm and still and for ages inlmovable,
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 and they smoke"
God is the only being who can manage a
volcano, and agn!n 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, de-
monstrate that the city was not fit to live.
In the first century that city, engirdled
with palaces, enlparadised with gardens,
pillared into architectural e1luisiteness,
was at the foot Of mountain, up the sides
of which it ran, with vineyards and villas
of merchant princes, and all that marble
and bronze and imperial baths and arbori-
culture and rainboWed fountains, and a
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 79, 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 sulphurous fumes scooped, and
streams Of mud poured through the streets
till few people escaped, and the city was
buried, and some of the inhabitants eighteen
hundred years after were found embalmed
in the scoria of that awful doom. The Lord
called upon volcanic forces to obliterate that
profigate city. He touched the hills and
they smoked.
Nothing but volcanic action can explain
what shall show you at the Dead Sea upon
which I looked last December, and Of whose
waters took bitter and stinging taste.
Concerning all that region there has been
controversy enough to fill libraries, science
saying one thing, revelation saying another
thing But admit volcanic action divinely
the same. Geology, 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 penman-
ship is by the same divine hand. Our horse
back ride will not be so steepto-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 Ashaltites, 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.
fortress Of Masada, where occurred some
thing more wonderful in the way Of despera-
ton than you ever heard of, unless you have
heard of that. Herod built a palace amid
these heaps of black and awful rocks which
look like tumbled midnight. A great band
of robbers, about one thousand including
their families, afterward held the fortress.
When the Roman army stormed that steep
and the bandits could no longer hold tho
place, their chieftain, Eleazar, made pow
erful speech which persuaded them to die
before they were captured. First the men
kissed their families loving and fearful
good-by and then put dagger into their
hearts, and the women and children
chosen Sa1 Then os to ten say men all were sss
other men, and each man lay down by the
dead wife and children 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 sixty slaugh-
tered. Great and rugged natural scenery
makes the most tremendous natures for good
or evil. Great statesmen and great robbers.
great orators and great butchers, were
nearly all born or reared among mountain
precipices. Strong natures are hardly ever
born upon the plain. When men have any
I fO n fhav
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 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 sug-
gested those bewitchmentS Of beauty, Lu-
zerne or Cayuga, some great pearl set oy
loving God in the bosom of the lu1uriant val
ley, 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 muleteers Will
take care of the horses while we 60 down TO
the brink and dip up the liquid mixture IN
the palm of the hand. The waters are COM
mingling of birthstone and pitch, and have
six times larger percentage of salt than
those of the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean hay.
ing four per cent. of salt and this lake 26H
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.
It empties into no sea, among other things,
for the simple reason that water cannot run
up hill. It swallows up theriver Jordan and
makes no response of thanks, and never re.
ports what 1t does with the twenty millions
cubic feet Of water annually received from
that sacred river. 1t takes the tree branches
and logs doated into it by the Jordan and
pitches them on the banks Of bitumen to de-
cay there.
The hot springs near its banks by the
name Of Callirhoe, where King Herod came
to battle off his illnesses, no sooner pour in
to this sea than they are poisoned. Not
fish scale swims it. Not an iasect walks it.
there it lifts you by an unnatural buoyancy
70 the SURFACE, as much as 70 Say'We want no
life here, but death is our preference, death"
Those who attempt to wade into this lake,
and submerge themselves, come out almost
as with the sting Of a hundred
wasp and hornets, and with lips and eye
lids swollen with the strange ablutlon.
The sparkle of its waters is not like tho
sparkle of beauty on other lakes, but
metallic lustre like unto the flash of
sword that would thrust you. The gazelles
and the ibexos that live on the hills beside it,
and cranes and wild ducks that fly across
for contrary to the old belief, birds do safe
ly wing their way over it-and the Arab
horses you have been riding, though thirsty
enough, will not drink out of this dreadful
mixture. A mist hovers over pats OF it al.
most continually, which, though natural
evaportion, seems like wing Of doom spread
over liquid desolation. 1t is the rinSings OF
nbomination. Itis an aqueous monster coiled
among the hills, or creeping with rippies,
In these regions once stood four great
cities of Assyria: Sodon, Gomorrah, Adma
and Zeboim. The Bible says they were de-
stroYei by tempest OF fire and brimstone