The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1890-11-19
REV. DR.. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN.
Day SERMON.


SUBJECT: "lJc NlruenS OF solomon
TEXT: Wmade me great 1rorks. Ibuilded
me houses, I planted me vineyards, I made
sne gardens and orchards, and planted trees
in them of all kinds of fruits: made me
pools Of 1coteT to ,rater there,cith the ,rood
that b'1ngeth forth trees" ."-Ecclesiastes
IL, AZ.
A spring morning and breakfast at Jeru-
salem. A king with robes snowy white in
chariot decked with gold, drawn by eight
horses, high mettled, and housings as bril-
Liant as il scolloped out of that very sunrise
and Ike the winds for speed, followed
by regiment of archers on horseback,
with hand on gilded bow and arrows with
steel points flashing in the sun, clad from
head to foot in Tyrisn purple, and black
hair sprinkled with gold dust, all dashing
down the road, the horses at full run, the
reins loose on their necIs, and the crack of
whips and the hal!oo Of the reckless caval-
cade putting the miles at defiance. Who is
it. and what is it! 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 contrast between that and
myself on that very road one morning last
December going afoot for our plain vehicle
gotten; we on the way to find what is called
Solomons 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
at the three great reservoirs. not ruins Of
reservoirs but the reservoirs themselves,
that Solomon built three millenniums ago
for the purpose of catching the mountain
streams and passing them to Jerusalem to
Nf fhn nnifrv nd ole 70 fr,.i-
gate the most glorious range of gardens that
ever bloomed with all colors or breathed
with all redolence for Solomon was the
greatest horticulturist, the greatest botanist,
the greatest ornithologist, the greatest capi-
talist and the greatest scientist Of his CEN
tury.
Come over the piles of gray rock, and here
we are at the first of the three reservoirs,
which are on three great levels, the base Of
the top reservoir higher than the top Of the
second, 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
basin, the sediment Of water deposited in
each of the three so that by the time it gets
down to the aqueduct which is to take it to
Jerusalem it has had three filterings, and is
as pure as when the clouds rained it. Won
derful specimens of masonry are these three
blocks of stone together is now just as when
the trowels three thousand years ago
smoothed the layers. The highest reservoir
$50 feet by 529, the second, 423 feet by 160,
and the lowest reservoir, $50 feet by 169, and
deep enough and wide enough and mighty
enough to float an ocean steamer.
On that December morning we saw the
waters rolling down from reservoir to
reservoir, and can well understand how IN
n5oxhh fha fvN,> to1 yIn
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
drawing illustrations from what he had
seen that very morning in the roya! gar
dens when he alluded to melons, and man
brakes, and apricots, and grapes, and
pomegranates, and figs, ami spiSen, and
cinnamon, and calamus, and campfire,
and "apple trees among the trees Of the
wood" and the almond tree as fourishing,
and to myrrh and frankincense, and repre-
sented Christ as ''gone down into his gar
dens, and the beds of spices to feed in the
gardens, and to gather lilies" and to ''eyes
like fish pools" and to the voice Of the
turtle dove as heard in the land. I think
it was when Solomon was showing the
Queen Of Sheba through these gardens that
the Bible 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 memoir
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,
"It don't pay" 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 all that grove and garden can do, and
the whole place looks out upon as enchanting
q landscape as the world holds water and
hill clasplng hands in perfect bewitchment
of scenery, but the 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 wnen 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 we'll to drink, when look
ing down into the well they saw the star re-
fected in the water and that cheered them,
and they resumed their journey; and I have
the notion that though grandeur and pomp
of surroundings may not afford peace at the
well Of Gods consolation, close by, you may
find happiness, aud the plainest cup Of the
well Of salvation may hold the brightest star
that ever shone from the heavens.
Although these Solononic gardens are in
ruins, there are now growing there flowers
that are to be found nowhere else in the
Holy Land. How dol account for that?
Solomon sent out his ships and robbed the
gardens of the whole earth for flowers, and
fhpco
hcular flowers are direct descendants of the
foreign plants he imported. Mr.. Meshullam,
a Christian Israelite, on the very sight Of
thece 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
yield just as much luxuriance and splendor
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 it
they had examined minutely the rocks and
stones of the Holy Land they would find that
they are being skeletonized and are being
melted into the soil and, being for the mosG
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 Writers, the great midsummer
heats of Palestine, by crumb!ing up and
dissolving the rocks are gradually preparing
3 Palestine and Syria to yield product like
unto the lu1uriant Nestchester farms of
New York, ana Lancaster County farms of
Pennsylvania, and Somerset County farms