The intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1887-1891, 1890-11-01
WARNINGS.
DR.. Talmage Continues His Dis
courses on Palestine.
His Visit to the Dead Seattle Warning
Taught By the Destruction of SOdom
aud Gomorrah-Desoription of
the Jordan.

WIN ldlHlage announced as MS teAl
Psalm civ. 80: "He toucheth the hills
and they smoke" He said:
David, the poet, here pictures a vol
cano and what Church's Cotopaxi doe:
on painters canvas this author does In
words. You see a 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 1t rise thick
vapors, intershot with fire. HE touch
eth the hills and they smoke"
God Is the only being who can man
age a volcano, and again and again ha
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 hat city, engirdled with pal
aces, unparalleled with gardens, pillared
into architectural exquisiteness, was al
the foot Of q mountain up the sides OF
which 1t ran with vineyards and villas
of merchant princes, and all that mar
BILE, and bronze, and imperial baths,
and arboriculture, and rainbowed
fountains, and q coliseum at the dedica.
ton of which 5000 beasts had been
slain, and a supernal la~ndscapein which
the shore ave 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 70, on
August 4, q back column rose above
the adjoining mountain and spread out,
Pliny says, as he saw 1t, like a great
pine tree, wider and wider, until 1t be-
gan to rain upon the city, first thin
ashes and then pumice stone, and sui
phurous fumes scooped n streams OF
mud poured through the streets till few
people escaped and the city was buried.
and some of the inhabitants 1, 800 years
after were found embalmed in the
scorie OF that awful doom.
The Lord called upon volcanic forces
to obliterate that proiigate city. He
touched the hills and they smoked.
Nothing but volcanic action can explain
what / shall show you at the Dead Sea
upon which Hooked last December and
of whose waters / took a bitter and
singing taste. Concerning all that
region there has been a controversy
enough to fill libraries, cience saying
one thing, revelation saying another
thing. But admit volcanic action di.
Vinely employed and both testimonials
are one and the same. Geology, chem.
istry, geography, astronomy, ichthyol.
ogy, or anthology and zoology. are CON-
ing one by n to confirm the Scrip
lures. Two leaves OF one book are rey.
elation and creation and the penman,
ship is by the same divine hand. Our
horseback ride will not be SO steep to-
day and you can stay on without cling.
ing to the pommel Of the saddle, but
the scenes amid which we ride shall, II
possible, be more thrilling and by the
time the horses snuff the sulphurous at
m~osphere of Lake Asphaltities or the
Dead Sea we will be ready to dismount
and read from our Bibles about what
was lone that day by the Lord when
He touched the hills and they smoked.
Take q detour and pass along by the
rocky fortress of Masada where occurred
something more wonderful in the way Of
desperation than you have W heard
OF, unless you have heard of that Herod
built o palace amid the heaps of black
and awful rocks which look like o
tumbled midnight A great band Of
robbers, about one thousand including
their families, afterward held the fort
ress. 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 q loving and fearful goodbye
and then put a dagger into their hearts
and the and children were slain.
Great and rugged natural scenery
makes the most tremendous natures for
good or evil. Great statesmen and great
robbers, great orators and great BUTCH
ers, we're 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 the concentrated
diabolism, and come along where the
salt crystals crackle under the horses
hoofs. You are near the most God-for-
saken region of all the earth. You to
whom the word lake has heretofore sug-
gested those b~ewitchments of beauty,
Luzerne or Cayuga, some great pearl set
by a loving God in the bosom Of the
luxuriant valley, change all your ideas
about a lake and see this sheet of water
which the Bible calls the Salt Sea, or
Sea of the Plain, and Josepus calls Lake
Asphaltites- The muleteers will take
care of the horses while we get down to
the brink and dip up the liquid mixture
in the palm of the hand. The
waters are a comminglimg Of
birthstone and pitch and have six
times larger percentage of salt than
hose of the Atlantic ocean, the ocean
having four per cent. of salt and this
lake 26A per cent Lake Sir-i-kol Of
India is the highest lake in the world.
This lake, on the bank Of which We
kneel, is the lowest lake. 1t empties
into no sea, among other things, for the
simple reason that water can lot run up
hill. 1t swallows up the river Jordan
and makes no response of thanks, n
never reports what it does with the
twenty million cubic feet Of water an
nually received from that sacred river.
it takes the tree branches and logs
fioated into 1t by the Jordan and 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 han they are poi
soned. Not a fish scale swims it. Not
an insect walks IT, 1t hates life, and II
unn ATTAIN nj IA uuipn thnra ~ lIfta unu
by an unnatural ~buoyancy to the sur
face, as much as to say: 1--WE want no
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 a hundred wasps and hornets,
and with lips and eyelids swollen with
the strange ablution.
In these regions once stood four great
cities Of Assyria; Sodom. Gomorrah,
Adma and Zebolm. The Bible says
they we're destroyed by a tempest OF
fire and birthstone after these cities had
filled up OF w~ickedness. "No. that is
absurd, cries some one; st is evident
that this was a region of salt and
birthstone and pitch long before that"
And so 1t was. The Bible says 1t
was a region OF sulphur long before
the great catastrophe. "Well, now"
says some one, wanting to raise a quar-
rel between science and revelation, 'you
have no right to say the cities OF the
plain were destroyed by a tempest of
fire and sulphur and birthstone, because
this region had these characteristics
long before these cities were de-