Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-04-28
SERMON BY DIR. TALMAGE.
HIS SUBJECT A MOST TIMELY ONE:
"TRE VOICES OF NATURE"

/ BROOKLYN, April 27.-Thei attrac
ton of the parks in their new spring
time garb, which affects many con
/ gregatiOns at this season, does not di
minish the crowd which pours into
the Academy of Music to hear the elo
quent preacher. This morning the
great edifce was thronged, as usual,
as soon as the doors were opened
After the reading of an appropriate
passage of Scripture and the singing
of the hymn, GLORY to God on High, ,
Dr. Talmage announced as his text
Isa TX, 10: THE glory of Lebanon
shall come unto the thee, the fir tree,
the pine tree and the box together, to
beautify the place of my sanctuary
Following is his sermon in full:
On our way from Damascus we saw
the mountains of Lebanon white with
snow, and the places from which the
cedars were hewn and then drawn by
OK teams down to the Mediterranean
sea, and then foated in great RATS to
Joppa, and then again drawn by OK
teams up to Jerusalem to build Solo
mons temple. Those mighty trees in
my text are called the glory of Leba-
non" Inanimate nature felt the effects
of the first transgressiOn. When Eve
touched the forbidden tree, it seems as
if the sinful contact had smitten not
only that tree, but as if the air caught
the pollution from the leaves, and as
if the sap had carried the virus down
into the very soil until the entire earth
reeked with the leprosy Under that
sinful touch nature withered. The in
animate creation, as if aware of the
damage done it, sent up the thorn and
brier and nettle to wound and fercely
oppose the human race.
THE MILLENNIUM.
Now as the physical earth felt the
effects of the first transgression, so it
shall also feel the effect of the Saw
tours mission. AS from that one tree
in Paradise a blight went forth
through the entire earth, so from one
tree on Calvary another force shall
speed out to interpenetrate and check,
subdue and override. the evil. In the
end it shall be found that the tree of
Calvary has more potency than the
tree of Paradise As the nations are
evangelical, | think corresponding
change viii be effected in the natural
world. | verify believe that the trees,
and the birds, and the rivers, and the
skies Will have their millennium IF
mans sin affected the ground, and the
vegetation, and the atmosphere, shall
Christ's work be less powerful or less
extensive?
Doubtless God will take the irregu-
ilarity and fierceness from the ele-
ments, so as to make them congenial
to the race, yet to be so symmetrical
and evangelical. The ground shall
not be so lavish of weeds and SO grudge-
full of grain. Soils which now have
peculiar proclivities toward certain
forms of evil production will be de
hvered from their besetting sins Steep
mountains, pIowed down into more
gradual ascent, shall be girdled with
hOcks of sheep and shocks of corn.
The wet marsh shall become the deep
grassed meadow Cattle shall eat I'M
harmed by caverns once haunted of
wild beasts Children will build play
houses in what was once a cave of ser
penis, and, as the Scripture saith, 1.-THE
weaned child shall put his hand on the
cockatrice's den"
Oh, what harvests shall be reaped
when neither drouth, nor excessive
rain, nor mildew, nor infesting insects
shall arrest the growth, and the ut
most capacity of the fields for prOduc-
ton shall be tested by an intelligent
and athletic yeOmanry. Thrift and
competency characterizing the worlds
inhabitants, their dwelling places shall
be graceful and healthy and adorned.
Tree and arbor and grove around
about will look as if Adam and Eve
had got back to Paradise. Great cities,
now neglected and unwashed, shall be
orderly, adorned with architectural
symmetry and connected with far dis
.tant seaports by present modes of
transportation carried to their greatest
perfection, or by new inventions yet
to spring up out of the water or drop
from the air at the beck of a Morse or
a Robert Fulton belonging to future
generations. Isaiah in my text seems
to look forward to the future condi-
ton OF the physical earth as a condi-
ton of great beauty and excellence,
and then prOphesies that as the strong
est and most ornamental timber in
Lebanon was brought down to Jerusa-
lem and constructed into the ancient
temple, so all that is beautiful and ex-
cellent in the physical earth shall yet
contribute to the church now being
built in the world 1.-The glory Of
Lebanon shall come unto thee; the fir
tree; the pine tree, and the box to-
gether, to beautify the place of my
sanctuary.
MUCH OF THY PROPHECY ALREADY
FULFILLED.
( Much of this prophecy has already
been fulfilled, and proceed to some
practical remarks upon the contribu-
tiOnS which the natural world is max
ing to the kingdom of God, and then
draw some differences. The first con-
tributiOn that nature gives to the
church IS her testimony in behalf of
the truth of Christianity This is an
age of profound research Nature can
not evade mems inquiries as once. In
chemists laboratory she is put to tor
ture and compelled to give up her
mysteries. Hidden laws have come
out Of their hiding place. The earth
and the heavens, since they have been
lransacked by geologist and botanist
and astronomer, appear SO different
from what they once were that they
may be called the new heavens and
the new earth.
| This research and discovery will
have powerful effect upon the relig-
ious world. They must either advance
or arrest Christianity, make men bet
ter or make them worse, be the
church's honor or the church's
overthrow Christians, aware of this
in the early ages of discovery, were
nervous and fearful as to the progress
of science. They feared that some
natural law, before unknown, would
suddenly spring into harsh collision
with Christianity. Gunpowder and
the CLEAN of swords would not so much
have been feared by religionists as
electric batteries, voltaic piles and as
Economical apparatus. It was feared
that Moses and the prophets would be
run over by skeptica1 chemists and
philosophers. Some of the followers
of Aristotle, after the invention of the
telescope. refused to look through that
instrument, lest what they saw would
overthrow the teachings of that great
philosopher But the Christian re-
igion has no such apprehension now.
Bring on your telescopes and micro
scopes and spectroscopes- and the
more the better The God of nature
is the God Of the Bible, and in all the
universe and in all the eternities he
has never once contradicted himself.
Christian merchants endow univer-
stiles and in them Christian DrOfeSS-