The Iola register., 1890-11-07
FRIGHTFUL WARNINGS.
DR.. Talmage Continues His Dis
courses on Palestine.
His Visit to the Dead sea-The Warning
Taught BY the Destruction of sodom
and Gomorrah-Description of
the Jordan.

In his fifth lecture upon the Holy
Land delivered at Brooklyn Rev. 7. De
Witt Talmage announced as his tex
Psalm civ. 80: He .toucheth the hill:
and they smoke" He said:
David, the poet here pictures vol.
cano and what Church's Cotopax does
on painters canvas this author does in
words. You see 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 it rise thick
vapors intershot with fire. He touch
eth the hills and they smoke"
God is the only being who can. man.
age volcano, and again and again has
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 that city, engirdled with pal
aces, emparadised with gardens, pillared
into architectural exquisiteness, was at
the foot of a mountain up the sides of
which It ran with vineyards and villas
of merchant princes, and all that mar
BILE, and bronze, and imperial baths
and arboriculture. and rainbowed
fountains, and coliseum at the dedica-
ton of which 1900 beasts had been
slain, and a supernal 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 world In the year 70, on
August 4, black column rose above
the adjoining mountain and spread out,
Pliny says, as he saw it, like a great
pine tree, wider and wider, until it be-
gan to rain upon the city, first thin
ashes and then pumice stone, and sui
phurous fumes scooped and streams of
mud poured through the streets till few
people escaped and the city was buried,
and some of the inhabitants 1,SOO years
after were found embalmed in the
scorie 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 1 looked last December and
of whose waters l took bitter and
stinging taste Concerning all that
region there has been a controversy
enough to fill Libraries, science saying
one thing, revelation saying another
thing But admit volcanic action d.
vinely employed and both testimonials
are one and the same. Geology, chem
istry, geography, astronomy, ichthyol-
ogy, or anthology and zoology, are COM
ing one by one to confirm the Scrip
lures. Two leaves of one book are rev.
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, if
possible, be more thrilling and by the
time the horses snuff the sulphurous at
mosphere of Lake Asphaltities or the
Dead Sea we will be 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 way of
desperation than you have ever heard
of, unless you have heard of that Herod
built palace amid the heaps of black
and awful rocks which look like a
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 powerful speech which
persuaded them to die before they were
captured. First the men kissed their
families loving and fearful goodbye
and then put dagger into their hearts
and the women and children were slain.
Great and rugged natural scenery
makes the most tremendous natures for
good or evil Greatstatesmen and great
Fobbers great orators and great butch
ers were 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 fa
Pass on from under the shadow of
Masada, the scene of the concentrated
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 bewitchments of beauty,
Luzerne or Cayuga, some great pearl set
by loving God in the bosom of the
luxuriant valley, change all your ideas
about lake and see this sheet of water j
which the Bible calls the Salt Sea, or
Sea of the Plain, and Josepus calls Lake |
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 comminglimg of |
birthstone and pitch and hare six
times larger percentage of salt than
those of Che Atlantic ocean, the ocean
having four per cent of salt and this
lake 26H 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 notr up
hill 1t swallows up the river Jordan
and makes nc response of thanks, and
never reports what it does with the
twenty million cubic feet of water an
nually received from that sacred river.
1t takes the tree branches and logs
aoated into it 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