Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1890-11-07
REV. DR.. TAlMAGE.
THE BRoOaLYN DIyISE's SUN.
DAY ERMOS.
Subject, "THE DEAD SEA AND TIT
RIVER JORDAN"

finger on the top Of il and from it rise thick
Vapors intershot with fire. "He toucheth
the hills and they smoke"
God Is the only being who can manage a
volcano, and again and again has He en-
ployed volcanic action. The pictures on
the walls or Pompeii, the exhumed Italian
city, as wo 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 a
coliseum at the dedication OF which nine
thousand 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 10 on the 4th
of August, n black column rose above the
adjoining mountain and spread out, Pliny
says, as he saw 1t, like great pine tree,
wider and wider, until 1t began to rain upon
the city first thin 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 inhabitants eighteen
hundred years after were found embalmed
| In the scorie of that awful doom. The Lord
| called upon volcanic forces TO oblterate 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 saying another
thing But admit volcanic action divnely
employed and both testimonies are one and
the same. Geology, chemistry, geography
astronomy, ichthyology, ornithology and
zoology are coming one by one to confirm
| the Scriptures. Two leaves of oae book are
Revelation and Creation, and the penman-
snip is by the same divine hand. Our horse
back ride will not be so steep to-day, and you
can stay on without clinging 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 Ashaltites 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 an they
smoked.
Take detour and pass along by the rocky
fortress of MaSada, where occurred some
ton than you ever heard of, unless you have
heard of that. Herod built 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, atterward held the fortress.
When the Roman army stormed that steep
and the bandits could no longer hold the
place, their chieftain Eleazar, made pow
erful speech which persuaded them 70 die
before they were captured. First the men
kissed their families loving and fearful
good-by and then put dagger into their
hearts, and the women and children
were slain. Then ten men were
chosen by lot TO slay all the
other men, and each man lay down by the
dead wife and children and waited for these
executioners to do their work This done
one man Of the ten killed the other nine.
Then the survivor committed suicide. Two
women and five children had hid them
selves and after all was over came forth to
tell OF the nine hundred and sixty slaugh-
tered. Great and rugged natural scenery
makes the 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
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 concentrated diabolism, 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-
gested those bewitchments of beauty, Luz
Zerne or Cayuga, some great pearl set by a
loving God In the bosom Of the luxuriant val
ley, change all your ideas about lake, and
see this sheet OF water which the Bible calls
the Salt Sea- or Sea of the Plain, and Joscphus
calls Lake Asphaltites. The muleteers will
take care of the horses while we go down to
the brink and dip up the liquid mixture in
the palm of the hand. The waters are COM
ningling Of birthstone and pitch, and have
six times larger percentage or salt than
those of the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean hav.
ing four per cent of salt and this lake 28ll
per cent. Lake Sir-ikol, OF India, Is the
highest lake in the world This lake, on the
banks of which we kneel, is the lowest lake
1t empties into no sea, among other things,
for the simple reason that water cannot run
up hill 1t swallows up the river Jordan and
makes no response Of thanks, and never re-
ports what it does with the twenty millions
cubic feet Of water annually received from
that sacred river 1t takes the tree branches
and logs fioated 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 Herod came
to battle of his illnesses no sooner, pour in
to this seq than they are poisoned. Not n
fish scale swims it. Not an insect walks it.
II hates life, and IL you attempt 10 swim
!. there it lifts you by an unnatural buoyancy
10 the surface, as much as to say'we want NJ
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 eye
lids swollen with the strange ablution
The sparkle of its waters is not like thu
sparkle of beauty on other lakes, but d
metallic lustre like unto the flash of q
sword that would thrust you. The gazele;
and the ibexes that live on the hills beside it
and cranes and wild ducks that fly across
for, contrary to the old belief, birds do safe
~ wing their way over it-and the Aral
horses you have been riding, though thirst,
enough, will not drink out of this dreadful
: mixture. A mist hovers over pai Is of it al
, most continually, which, though natura
evaportion, seems like a wing Of doom spreal
over liquid desolation. IL is the rinsings o.
abomination. It's an aqueous monster coile(
. among the hills, or creeping with ripples
1 and stepchful with nauseating malodors.
In these regions once stood four grea
cities OF Assyria: Sodon, Gomorrah, Adm
!. and Zeboim. The Bible says they were de
stroyed by tempest OF fire and brmston
after these cities had filled up with wickednes'
, "No, that is absurd" cries some one; lit
evident that this was a region OF salt an
birthstone and pitch long before that" An
\ so IT was. The Biole says 1t was a region O
sulphur long before the great catastrope
"Well, now" says some one, wanting +
;. raise quarrel between science and Revela
ton, ''you have no right to say the cities 0
" the plain were destroyed by a tempest o
y fire and sulphur and birthstone, because thi
region had these characteristics long befor
a these cities were destroyed" Volcanic nc
ton, my reply hnese clues sso aa pre-
D. mortar was bitumen easily iQnited. and th
:, wuns orlpped with pitch most infiammabl