The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1890-11-06
REV. Or. TAlMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIvINE's SUN
DAY SERMON.
Subject, "l'HE DEAD SEA AND THE
RIVER JORDAN"


Jerusalem TO Jericho, Luke X, so.
David the poet here pictures volcano 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 tho heavens puts His
finger on the top of 1t and from il rise thick
vapors intershot with fire. "He toucheth
the hills and they smoke"
God is the only being who can manage a
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, de-
monstrate that the city was not tit to live.
In the first century that city, engirdled
with palaces, emparadised with gardens,
pillared into architectural exquisiteness.
was at the foot of mountain, up the sides
of which 1t 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
coliseum at the dedication of which nine
thousand beasts had been slain, and .
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 10 on the 4th
OF August, black column rose above the
adjoining mountain and spread out, Pliny
says, as he saw 1t, 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, aud some of the inhabitants eighteen
hundred years after We're found embalmed
in the scoria of thatawful doom. The Lord
called upon volcanic forces to obliterate that
profligate 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
waters l took bitter aud singing taste.
Concerning all that region there has been
controversy enough to fiji libraries, science
saying one thing, revelation saying another
thing, But admit volcanic action divnely
employed and both testimonies are one and
the same. Geology, chemistry, geography,
astronomy, ichthyology, ORTHODOXY 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 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 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 an 4 they
smoked
Take detour and pass along by the rocky
fortress of Masada, where occurred some
thing more wonderful in the way of despsra-
tion 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 ths
place. their chieftain, Eleazar, made pow
srfui 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
were slain. Then ten men were
chosen by lot to STAY all the
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
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 crackie 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-
zerna or Cayuga, some great pearl set by a
| loving God in the bosom of the luSuriant val
lev, 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 go 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 hav-
| ing four per cent of salt and this lake 26]4
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 ruI
up hill. 1t swallows up theriver Jordan anc
makes no response of thanks and never re
| ports what it does with the twenty millions
| cubic feet Of water annually received from
that sacred river. 1t takes the tree branche!
and logs hoated into it by the Jordan anC
pitches them on the banks of bitumen to de
cay there
The hot springs near its banks by TIL
name Of Callirhoe, where King Herod cam
to battle off his illnesses, no sooner pour in
to this sea than they are poisoned Not q
fish scale swims it. Not an insect walks it
1t hates life, and if you attempt to swim
there it lifts you by an unnatural buoyancJ
TO the surface, as much as to say"we want nc
| life here, but death is our preference death
Those who attempt to wade into this lake
and submerge themselves, come out almost
maddened, as with the sting of hundred
wasps and hornets, and with lips and eye
lids swollen with the strange abluti0n
| The sparkle Of its waters is not like thi
| sparkle Of beauty on other lakes, but d
metallic lustre like unto the fash of q
sword that would thrust you. The gezelle:
and the ibexes 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 itand the Arat
horses you have been riding, though thirst,
enough, will not drink out of this dreadful
| ullAluTt. n ullSt HONtlo over pdt 70 VI ~ III
most continually, which, though natura
evaportion, seems like wing of doom spread
over liquid desolation. 1t is the rinsings OF
abomination. 1t is an aqueous monster coileC
among the hills, or creeping with ripples
and stenchful with nauseating malodors.
In these regions once stood four grea
cities of Assyria: Sodon, Gomorrah, ADM
and Zeboim. The Bible says they were de
stroyed by tempest of fire and hrimston
after these cities had filled up with wickednes.
'sNo that is absurd" cries some one; lit
evident that this was a region of salt an
birthstone and pitch long before that" An
SO ii was. The Bible says it was region 0
sulph II long before the great catastrope
"Weli, now" says some one, wanting t
raise quarrel between science and Revela
ton, ''you have no right to say the cities o
the plain were destroyed by a tempest o
fire and sulphur and birthstone, because thi
region had these characteristics long befor
these cities were destroyed" Volcanic &C
ton, is my reply. These cities had bee
built out Of very combustible materials. Th
mortar was bitumen easily ignited, and tn
walls dripped with pitch most inf1ammabi
They sat, think, on a ridge of hills. The
stood high up and conspicuous, radiant
their sins, ostentatious in their debaucherie
four bells on earth.
One day there was a rumbling in the eartl
and quaking whats thatg cry the a
! frir al ,,,ha hos