Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-11-01
REV. DR.. TALMAGE.
The Eminent Brooklyn Divine's Sun
day Sermon.
Subject, "The Dead Sea and the River
Jordan"

TEXT. "A certain man tCs71t dQfrf from
Jerusalem to Jericho Luke K, 80.
David the poet here pictures volcano. and
what Church's Cotopaxi does on painters
canvas this author does in words You sec
hill, calm and still and for ages immovable,
but the Lord out of the heavens puts His
finger on the top of itand from it rise thick
vapors intershot with fire. He toucheth
the hills and they smoke
God is the only being who can manage
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
coliseum at the dedication of which nine
thousand beasts had been slain, and
supernai 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 word. In the year 10, on the 4th
of August, a black column rose above the
adjoining mountain and spread out Pliny
says, as be saw it, like a great pine tree,
wider and wider, until it began to rain upon
the city first tain 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 inha bitants eighteen
hundred years after were found embalned
in the scoris 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 looked last December, and of whose
waters took bitter and singing taste.
Concerning all that region there has been
controversy enough to fill libraries science
saying one thing, revelation saving another
thing. But admit volcanic action diVinely
employed and both testimonies are one and
the same. Geology, chemistry, geography.
astronomy, ichthyology, ornithoogy 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 nd you
can stay on without clngiig 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 Ashatites, or the Dead Sea-
We VIII be ready to dismount and read from
our Bibles about what was done that day by
smoked.
Take detour and pass along by the rocky
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 tbs
pace, their chieftain, Eieazar, made DOW
erful speech which persuaded tGem to die
before they were CAPTURED. First the men
klsse1 their families loving and fearful
good-5y and then put dagger into their
hearts, and the women aud 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 chiliren and waited for these
execu1oners to do their WORK This done,
one man of thu ten killed the other nine
Then the survivor committed suicide Two
t women and five children had hid them
serves, an after all was over came forta to
tell OF the nine hundred and sixty siaugh-
tered Great and rugged natural scenery
makes ble 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
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 diabolisn, 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-
gestsd those bswitchments of beauty. Iu-
zerne or Cayuga, some great pearl set by
loving God in the bosom of the luxuriant val
ley, change all your ideas about laSe, and
see this sheet of water which the Bible calls
the Salt Sea, or Sea OF the Plain, and Josephus
calls Lake ASphaitites. The muleteers will
take care of the horses while we go down to
the brink AMI dip up the liquid mixture in
the pain OF the hand. The waters are a COM
minging OF birthstone and pitch and have
SIX times larger percentage OF salt than
these of the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean hav-
ing four per cent. OF salt and this lake 26Z
| 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 empsies into no sea, among other things.
for the simple reason that wafer cannot run
up hill. Ii swallows up theri Jordan and
makes no response OF thanks and never r.
ports what it does with the twenty millions
cubic feet Oh water annually received from
that sacred river. 1t takes the tree branches
and logs iloated 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 Heroi cams
to battle off his illnesses, no sooner pour III
to this sea than they are poisoned. Not
| fish scale swims it. Not an insect walks il.
1t hates life, aud If YOU attempt to swim
there 1t lifts you by an unnatural buoyancy
to the surface, as much as to say''w want no
life here, but death is our preference, DEATH
Those wno attempt TO wade into this lake
and submerge themselves come out almost
maddened, as with the sting OF a hundred
wasps and hornets, and with lips and eye
lids swollen with the strange ablution.
The sparkle Of its waters is not ike the
sparkle Of beauty on other lakes but II
meta lie lustre like unto the flash of a
sword that would thrust You. The g5Zelles
and the ihexes that live on the hills beside it,
and cranes and wild ducks that fly across
for contrary to the old belief, blrdS do safe
iy wing their way over it-and the Arab
horses you have been riding, though thirsty
enough, VIII not drink out of this dreadful
I mixture. A mist hovers over pan Is of it al.
most continually. which. though natural
evaportion, seems like wing of doom spread
over liquid desolation. 1t is the rinsings OF
abomination. it is an aqueous monster cooled
among the hills, or creeping with ripples
and stenchful with nauseating malOdors.
In these regions once stood four great
cities OF Assyria; Sojon, Gomorrah, Adma
and Zeboim. The Bible says they were de-
stroyed by a tempest of fire and birthstone
after these cities had filled up with wickeineSs.
''No, that is ABSURD cries some one; ''it is
evident that this was a region of salt and
birthstone and pitch long before that" And
so it was. The Bible says it was region Of
sulphur long before the great catastrops.
WELL now says some one wanting to
raise quarrel between science and Reyela-
ton, you have no right to say the cities of
the plain were destroyed by tempest of
fire and sulphur and birthstone, because this
region had these characteristics long before
these cities were destroyed" Volcanic ac-
ton, is my reply. These cities had been
built out of very combustible materials The
mortar was a bitumen easily ignited, and the
walls dripped with pitch most inf,ammable
/ They sat, think, on ridge of hills Thew
/ stood high up and conspicuous, radiant in
, ther SINS, ostentatious in their debaucheries
! four bells on earth.
One day there was runAling in the EARTH
| and quaking whats thats" cry tia af-
| frighted inhabitants whats thaty' The
! foundations nf the earth were giving way. A
| volcano, whose fires had been burning for
ages at Gods command bursts forth, easily
/ setting everything adame, and first lifting
| these cities high in the air aud then dashing
! them down in chasins fathomless. The fires
! OF that eruption intershot the dense smoke
! and rolled unto the heavens, only to descend
again. And all the confguration of that
country was changed, and where there was
| a hill there came a valley, and where there
had been the pomp of uncleanness came wide
! spread desolation. The red hot spade Of
volcanic action had sh1ve,ed under the cities
of the plain. Before the catastrophe the
cities stood on the too of the salt and sui
! phur After the catastrooha thev rxava