Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-11-08
REV. DR.. TALMAGE.
The Eminent Brooklyn Divine's Sun.
day Sermon.
Subject. aThe Gardens OF solomon.

Subject: "The Gardens of Solomon"
! TEXT: u made me great ,rorks. buildsd
me houses. planted me vineyards, made
me gardens and orchards and planted trees
IN them of all kinds of fruits; made me
pools Of acater to tcatei fhersaoith the mood
mat 5ifngeh forth ees."-Ecclesiaste
IL, At.
A spring morning and breakfast at Jeru-
saiem. A king with robes snowy white in
e5narict deeSed with gold, drawn by eight
horses. high melted, and housings as bril-
hant as seoiloped out of that very sunrise,
and Ike the winds for speed, followed
/ by regiment OF archers on horseback.
! with hand on g'lded bow and arrows with
Steei points flashing in the sun, clad from
mead to foot in Tyrian purple and black
1 bair sprinkled with gold dust, all dashing
down the road, the horses at full run, the
reins loose on their necks and the crack of
1 WHIPS and the ha!!oo of the reckless cayai-
cade putting he miles at defiance. Who is
IL aud what is 1T King Solomon taking an
! outing before breakfast from Jerusalem to
/ his gardens and parks and orchards and res
/ ervolrs. SIX miles down the road toward
/ Hebron What a contrast between that and
1 myself on that very road one morning last
! December going aioot, for our plain vehicie
iurnei back for Photographic apparatus for
SoioHonS pool, the ancient water works of
Jerusalem, and the gardens of king nearly
three thousand years ago. We cross the
aqueduct again and again, and here we are
4 az the three great reservoirs not ruins of
! reservoirs, but the reservoirs themselves
mat Solomon built three milenniums ago
ior the purpose OF catching the mountain
streams and passing them to Jerusalem to
| sake the thirst of the city, and also to irri-
! gaze the most glorious range of gardens that
4 ever bloomed with all colors or breathed
I with al redoience. for Solomon was the
/ greatest horticulturist, the greatest botanist
/ the greatest ornithologist, the greatest capt.
! tailst and the greatest scientist of his CEN
I fury.
| Come over the piles OF gray rock, and here
4 we are at the frs of the three reservoirs
which are on three great levels the base of
the top reservoir higher than the top of the
! Jecond, the base of the second reservoir
higher than the top of the third. SO arranged
that the waters gathered from the several
/ sources above shall descend from basin to
1 hasln the sediment of water deposited in
each OF the three, so that by the time it gets
Dawn TO the aqueduct VIII ch is to take it to
Jerusalem it has had three offerings and is
as pure as when the clouds rained it. Won
/ derful specimens of masonry are these three
reservoirs. The white cement fastening the
blocks of stone together is now Just as when
I the trowels three thousand years ago
smoothed the layers. The highest reservoir
'5oO feet by 529, the second, 423 feet by 100.
/ ana the lowest reservoir, $50 feet by 1859 and
deep enough and wide enough and mighty
enough to float an ocean steamer
Tn that December morning we saw the
! waters rolling down from reservoir to
/ reservoir, and can well understand how In
this neighborhood the imperial gardens
/ were one great blossom, and the orchard
one great basket of fruit, and that Solo
mon in his palace, writing the Song of
| Songs and Ecclesiastes, may have been
| craving illustrations from what he had
| seen that very morning in the royal gar
| dens when he alluded to melons, and man
brakes and apricots, and grapes, and
| pomegranates. and figs, ami spiken, and
/ cinnamon, and calamus, and campfire,
ana apple trees among the trees of the
/ wood, and the almond Tree as fiourishing,
end to myrrh and frankincense and repre-
sented Christ as gone down into his gar
oens, and the beds of spices to feed in the
/ gslGtns, and to gather lilies" and to ''eyes
I IKE fish pools" and to the voice of the
/ turtle Cove as heard in the land. [ think
4 u vas when Solomon was showing the
/ Queen Of Sheba through these gardens that
/ the Bitle says of her There remained no
more spirit in her" She gave it up
But all this splendor did not make Solomon
happy One day, after getting back from
his morning ride and before the horses had
yet been cooled off and rubbed down by the
royal equerry, Solomon wrote the memor-,
able words following my text, like dirge
played after grand march, Behold all was
vanity and vexation of spirit and there was
no profit under the SUM- In other words
1t don't paym Would God that we might
all learn the lesson that this world cannot
produce happiness! At Marseilles there is
castellated house on high ground, crowned
with alt that grove and garden can do and
the whole place looks out upon as enchanting
a landscape as the world holds, water and
hull clasplng hands in perfect bewitchment
OF scenery, but tue owner OF that place is
totally blind, and to him all this goes for
/ nothing, illustrating the truth that whether
one be physically or morally blind, brilliancy
OF surrounding cannot give satisfaction: but
tradition says that when the wise men of
the east were being guided by the star on
the way to Bethlehem they for little while
/ lost sight of that star and in despair and ex-
haustion came to Il well to drink, when lool-
ing down into the well they saw the star re-
I Elected in the water and that cheered them
and they resumed their Journey and have
the notion that though grandeur and pomp
/ of surroundings may not afford peace at the
well of Gods consolation. close by, you may
lind happiness, and the panest cup of the
well of salvation may hold the brightest star
that ever Stone from the heavens.
Although these Solomonic gardens are in
ruins there are now growing there flowers
that are to be found nowhere else in tho
Holy Laad. How do account for that?
/ Solomon sent out his ships and robbed the
gardens of the whole earth for flowers, and
planted these exotics here, and these par
! ticuiGr flowers are direct descendants of the
foreign plants he imported. Mr.. Meshullam.
a Christian Israelite, on the very sight OF
/ these royal gardens, has in our day, by put
/ ting in his own spade, demonstrated that the
ground is only waiting for the right call to
. Weld inst as mach l1Yurian9p and Snlpu6Nr
eighteen hundred years after Christ as it
/ yielded Solomon one THOUSAND years before
Christ So all Palestine Is waiting to become
the richest scene of horticulture arboricul-
ture and agriculture.
Recent travellers in the Holy Land
speak Of the rocky and stony surface of
nearly all Palestine as an impossible barrier
to the future cultivation OF the soil But if
they had examined infinitely the rocks and
stones OF the hoiy Land they would find that
they are being skeletonized end are being
melted into the soil and, being for the most
part limestone, they are doing for that land
what the American and English farmer does
when, at great expense and fatigue, he
draws his wagon load of lime and scatters it
on the fields for their enrichment. The
storms, the winters the great midsummer
heats of Palestine, by crumbling up and
dissolving the rocks are gradually preparing
Palestine and Syria to Weld product like
I New York, ana Lancaster County farms of
/ Pennsylvania, and Somerset County farms
/ OF Aew Jersey and the other magnificent
farm fields of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and
/ the opulent orchards of Maryland and Cal
ifornia. Let the Turk be driven out and the
! American or Engljshman or Scotchman go
/ in and Mohammedanism Withdraw its idol
airy and pure Christianity build its affairs
4 and he irrigation OF which Solomon's pools
( was only suggestion will make all that land
I from Dan to Beersheha as fertile and
aromatic an I respondent as on the morning
when the king rode out to his pleasure
! grounds in chsriot so swift and followed by
mounted riders so brilliant that it was for
speed like a hurricane followed by cyclone
As | look upon this great aqueauct of
] Palestine, a wondrous specimen of ancient
masonry, about seven feet high. two feet
wide, sometimes tunneling the solid rock
and tben rolling its waters through stone
ware pipes, an aqueduct doing its work ten
/ mites before it gets to those three reservoirs
/ and tnen gathering tneir wealth of refresh
I Dent snd pouring it. on to the MIGHTY CITY
OF Jerusalem ant filing the brazen sea of he,
empie. and the bathrooms OF her nalaces
ana the great pools OF Sloan, and Hezetiab
[ ana bethesda, find that our century has no
monopoly of the worlds wonders. and thar
'he conceltet age in which we live had bette,
/ taSe IN some OF the sails of its pride when it
Z remembers that it is hard work in later aces
10 get masonry that will last fifty years, to
say nothing of the three thousand, and no
modern machinery could lift blocks OF
stone like some of those standing
hlgn up in the walls of Baalhec.
and the art of printing claimed for