News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1890-12-04
ON LAKE GALILEE.
SERMON DELIVERED BY REV. T. DE
WITT TALMAGE.


Production Fully Reported.
BROOKLYN, Nov. 30-Dr. Talmage
preached today the tenth of his series
of sermons on his Palestine tour, de-
scribing his experiences on the lake
whose waters were once stilled at the
command of Christ. The sermon,
which was delivered in the Brooklyn
Academy of Music in the morning and
as usual repeated before an enormous
audience at The Christian Herald serv-
ice in New York in the evening, was
from the text, He entered into a ship
and sat in the sea; and the whole null
titude was by the sea on the land. |"
Mark iv, l.
1t is Monday morning in our Pales-
tine experience, and the sky is n blue
Galilee above as in the boat we sail
the blue Galilee beneath. 1t is thirteen
miles long and six miles wide, but the
atmosphere is so clear it seems as if /
could cast a stone from beach to beach.
The lake looks as though it had been
let down on silver pulleys from the
heavens and were a section of the sea
of glass that St. John describes as a
part of the celestial landscape. Lake
Galilee is a depression of six hundred
feet in which the river Jordan widens
and carries little, for the river Jor-
dan comes il. at its north side and de
parts from its south side, 50 this lake
has its cradle and its grave. Its white
4 i h. e
Mount Hermon, where the Jordan
starts, and its sepulcher is the Dead
sea, into which the Jordan empties
Lake Como, of Italy; Lake Geneva, of
Switzerland; Lake Lcmond. of Scot
land; Lake Winnipesaukee, of America,
are larger, but Lake Galilee is the
greatest diamond that ever dropped
from the finger of the clouds, and
whether encamped on its banks as we
were yesterday and worshiping at its
crystal affairs, or wading into IT'S waves.
which make an ordinary bath solemn
as a baptism; or now putting out upon
its sparkling surface in boat. it is
something to talk about and pray
about and sing about, until the lips
with which we now describe it can
neither talk, nor pray, nor sing.
THE PLANETS PET LAKE.
As sometimes q beautiful child in a
ueighborhood has half dozen pet
names. and some of the neighbors call
her by one name and others by an
other. so this pet lake of the planet has
- Al ~
as he goes by what this sheet of water
Is. and he wilLcall it Tabariyeh. Ask
Moses of the Old Testament, and he
calls it Sea of Chinnereth. Ask Mat
thew. and he calls it Sea of GaliIee.
Ask Luke, and he calls it Sea of Gen
nesaret- Ask John, and he calls it Sea
Of Tiberias. Ask Josephus and Fuse
bus and they have other names ready.
But to me it appears child of the
sky, star of the hills, rhapsody of
the mountains, the baptisnal bowl of
the worlds temple, the smile of the
great God Many kinds of fish are
found in these waters, every kind of
tree upon its bank, from those that
grow in the torrid zone to those in the
frigid, from the palm to the cedar.
OF the two hundred and thirty war
ships Josephus unanswered on these
waterS-for Josephus was warrior as
well as IL histOrian-there remains not
one piece of hulk, or one patch of a
canvas. or one splinter of an oar But
return TO America we never will until
we have had a sail upon this inland
sea Not from a wharf, but from a
beach covered with black and white
pebbles we go on board a boat of
about ten or twelve tons, to be pro-
PEELED partly by sail and partly by
oar. The mast leans so far forward
that it seems about to fall, but we find
it WAS purposely SO built, and the rope
through a pulley manages to hoist and
let down the sail 1t is a rough boat,
and as far as possible removed from a
Venetian gondola or a sportsman's
yacht. With a common saw and ham,
Iuer and AK many of you could make
better one. Four barefooted Arabs,
instead of sitting down to their oars,
stand as they always do in rowing, and |
pull away from shore. / insist on help |
ing for there is nothing more exhila-
rating to me than rowing, but l soon
have enough of the clumsy cars and |
the awkward attempt at welding them |
while in standing posture.
FRAGMENT OF THE FALLEN SKY.
We put our overcoats and shawls on |
a small deck in the stern of the boat, |
the very kind of deck where Christ |
lay on a fisherman's coat when of old |
a tempest bounced upon the fishing |
smack of the affrighted disciples Os- |
preys and wild duck and kingfishers fly |
overhead or dip their wings into the |
lake, installing it for a fragment of |
fallen sky. Can it be that those Bible |
stories about sudden storms on this |
lake are truel Is it possible that sea 1
of such seeming placidity of temper |
could ever rise and rage at the heav- |
ensl 1t does not seem as if this happy
family of elements could have ever had /
a falling out and the water strike at |
the clouds and the clouds strike at the |
wafer.
Pull away, olrsmen! On our right |
bank are the hot sulphur baths, so hot |
they are scalding, and the waters must |
cool of a long while before hand or
foot can endure their temperature |
Volcanoes have been boiling these |
waters for centuries. Four springs roll
their resources into two great swim
ming reservoirs. King Herod there
tried to battle off the results of his ex-
cesses, and Piiny and JOsephus describe |
the spurtings out of these volcanic |
heats, and Joshua and Moses knew |
about them. and this moment long |
lines OF pilgrims from all parts of the |
earth are waiting for their turn to step |
into the steaIning restoratives.
Let the boat, as far as possible and |
not run aground, hing the western shore
of the lake, that we may see the city of |
Tiberias, once a great capital, of the
of which a few mosaics |
and fallen pillars and pedestals, and |
here and there a broken and shattered |
fricze remain, nightly suggestive of |
the time when Hcrod Antipas had
palace here and reigned with an opu-
Ience and pomp and cruelty and |
that paralyzes the fingers
of the historian when lie comes to
write it and the fingers of the painter
when he attempts 30 transfer it to can
vas suppose he was one of the worst
men that ever lived And what a con-
trast of character comes at every mo-
ment to the thoughtful traveller in Pal
estine. whether he walks the beach of