Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1890-10-27
DEAD SEA AND JORDAN.
DR.. TALMAeE's FIFTH SERMON ON
HIS TOUR IN THE HOLY LAND.

Wrath.
BROOKLYN, Oct. 26--Dr. Talnage
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 Christian Herald service in
the Academy Of Music, New York, the ser
mon was repeated before All audience
which filled the vast building in every part.
DR.. Talmage announced as his text, Ps.
civ, 81: "fIe toucheth the hills and they
smoke" He said
David the poet here pictures volcano,
ana what Church's CotopaM does on
painters canvas this author does in words,
You see a hill, calm and still and for ages
immovable, but the Lord out o. the heay-
ems 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 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 fit 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 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 II
coliseum at the~dedication Of which nine
thousand beasts had been slain and a su.
pernal landscape in which the shore gave
roses TO the sea and the sea gave crytals to
tho 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, a black column rose
above the adjoining mountain and spread
out, Pliny says, ms he saw it,, like "A great
pine tree, wider and wider, until it began
to rain upon the city first thin ashes and
then pumice stone, and sulphurous fumes
scoopod, 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 scoriB Of
that awful doom The Lord called upon
volcanic forces to obliterate that profit
gate city He touched the hills and they
smoked
SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE AGREE
Nothing but volcanic action can explain
what | shall show you ut the Dead sea
upon which ! looked last Decem Der, and
of whose waters | took bitter and sting
ing taste. Concerning all that region there
has been controversy enough to fill H.
braries, science saying one thing, reyela-
ton saying another thing. But admit vol
canic action dWinely employed and both
testimonies are one and the same. Geology
chemistry, geography, astronomy, ichthy-
ology, ornithology and zoology are coming
one by one to confirm the Scriptures. Two
leaves of one book ARE Revelation and Crca-
ton, and the penmanship is by the same
divine hand Our horseback ride will not
be SO steep today, AMI YOU can stay on
without clinging TO the pJmmel of the sad
die, 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 Ashalttes, or the
Dead sea, we will he 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 occurred
something more wonderful in the why of
desperation than you have ever heard Of,
unless you have heard of that Herod
built palace amid these heaps Of black
and awful rocks which look like a tumbled
midnight A great band of robbers about
one thousand including their families, af-
terward held the fortress. When the RO.
man army stormcd that steep and the bun.
dts could no longer hold the place, their
Eleazar, made II powerful speech
which persuaded them to die before they
were captured First the men kissed their
families loving and fearful good by and
then put II dagger into their hearts, and
the women and children were slUia Then
ten men were chosen by lot TO Stay all the
other men, and each man lay down by the
dead wife and children ami waited foc
these eXecutoners TO do their work This
done. one man of the ten killed the other
nine Then the survivor committed sui
eide. Two women and five children had
hid themselves, and after all was over
came forth to tell of the nine hundred and
sixty slaughtered. Great and rugged nat
ural 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 nat
ures are hardly ever born upon the plain
When men have anything greatly good or
greatly evil to do they come down off the
rocks,
THE LAND or DEsoLATIoN.
Pass on from under the shadow Of Masa
da, the scene Of concentrated diabolism,
and come along where the salt crystals
craclSle under the horses hools You are
near the most God forsakeu region of all
the earth You to whom the word lake
has heretofore suggested those bewitch-
ments Of beauty, Luzernc or Cayuga, some
great pearl set by a 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
Sea Of the Plain, and Josephu- ,,dls Lake
The muletoers 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 a com
Of birthstone aud pitch, and have
six times larger percentage of salt than
those of the Atlantic ocean, the ocean hav- !
ing per cent of salt and this lake 90 a per |
cent Lake Sir-i-kol, of India, is the high /
est lake in the world. This lake, on the /
banks OF which we kneel, is the lowest
lake. Il empties into no sea, among other !
things, for the simple reason that water
cannot run up hill 1t swallows up the
river Jordan and makes no response of
thanks, and never reports what it does
with the twenty million cubic feet Of water |
annually received from that sacred river. /.
II takes the tree branches and logs foated /
into it by the Jordan aud pitches them on
the banks-of bitumen to decay there.
The hot springs near its banks by the +
name Of Callirhoe, where King Herod /.
came TO battle of his illnesses no sooner /
pour into this sea than they are poisoned. /.
Not fish scale swims it, Not an insect I.
Mnlks IL II Lnins lifn md II Nnn ntfrtnnt !