Connecticut western news., 1890-10-29
DEAD SEA AND JORDAN.
SERMON DELIVERED BY DR. T. DE
 WITT TAlMAGE.

The Eminent Divine Continues His Mar
 ration of His Thrillingly Interesting
 Journey Through the Holy Land-Full
 Text of the Discourse Is Here Given.
 BROOKLYN, Oct. 26.-Dr Talmage 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 Chris tian Herald service in the Academy of Music, New York, the sermon was re- peated before an audience which filled the vast building in every part. Dr. Talmage announced as his text Psalm civ, 32: ''He toucheth the hills and they smoke" He said:
 David the poet here pictures a 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, 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 Jared into architectural exquisiteness 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 imperial baths and arboriculture and rainbowed fountains, and a coliseum at the dedi- cation of which nine thousand beasts had been slain, and a supernal land scape 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, a black column rose above the adjoin- ing 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 peo- pie escaped and the city was buried, and some of the inhabitants eighteen hundred years after were found en- balmed in the scoriB 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 ex- plain what 1 shall show you at the Dead sea upon which I looked last De- cember, and of whose waters I took bitter and stinging 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 sul- 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.
 VIVID BIT OF DESCRIPTION.
 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 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 -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 a 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 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 chil- 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
 sixty slaughtered. Great and rugged
 natural scenery makes the most tre-
 mendous natures for good or evil.
 Great statesmen and great robbers, 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 dowr | off the rocks.
 ! Pass on from under the shadow O.
 Masada, the scene of concentrated di
 abolism, and come along where the sal
 crystals crackle under the horses hoofs
 You are near the most Godforsake
 region of all the earth. You to whoI | 4ha -o.d lalxo has herafnfOra SuooaStR