The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1891-11-06
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Combinations of Holy Writ Along
the River Nile.
Five OF the Seven Mouths Have Disap-
peared-InnndatiOns and Famines-
The Voice OF the Past and
What It Tells.


and the text:
The river is mine. and have made it
Ezekiel xxx. q
Aha! This is the river Nile. A
brown or yellow, or silver cord on
which are hung more jewels of thrill
ing interest than on any river that ever
twisted in the sunshine. 1t ripples
through the Book of Ezekiel, and
flashes through the Book of Deuterono-
my, and Isaiah and Zechariah, and
Nahum, and on its banks stood the
mightiest of many ages. IL was the
crystal cradle of Moses, and on its
bank, Mary. the refugee, carried the
infant Jesus. To find the birthplace
OF this river was the fascination and
defeat of expeditions without number
Not many years ago, Bayard Taylor,
our great American traveller, wrote;
'tSince Column bus first looked upon San
Salvador. the earth has but one emo
ton of triumph left for her bestowal.
and that she reserves for him who
shall first drink from the fountains of
the White Nile under the snow fields
of Kilimanjauo. But the discovery of
the sources OF the Nile by most people
was considered an impossibility. The
malarias, the wild beasts, the savages,
the unclim bable sleeps, the vast dis
taDces, stopped all the expeditions for
ages. An intelligent native said to Sir
Samuel w. Baker and wife as they
were on their way to accomplish that
in which others had failed: Give up
the mad scheme of the Nile source.
How would it be possible for lady
young and delicate to endure what
wonId kill the strongest man? Give it
up" But the work went on until
Spoke, and Grant, and Baker found the
two lakes which are the source of what
was called the White Nile, and bap-
tized these two lakes with the names of
Victoria and Albert.
As we start where the Nile empties
into the Mediterranean sea we behold
a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy.
The Nile, in very ancient times, used TO
have seven months. AS the great river
approached the sea il entered the sea at
seven different places. Isaiah prophe-
sled: THE Lord shall utterly destroy
the tongue of the Egyptian sea and
shall smite it in the seven streams"
two and Herodotus said these two re-
manning are artificial. Up the Nile we
shall 60; part of the way by Egyptian
rail train and then by boat, and we
shall understand why the Bible gives
such prominence to this river, which is
the largest river of all the earth, with
one exception. But before we board
the train we must take look at Alex
andria. 1t was founded by Alexander
the Great, and was once the New York,
the Paris, the London of the world.
Temples. palaces, fountains, gardens,
pillared and effiorescent with all arch
itectural and Edenic grandeur and
sweetness. Apollos, the eloquent,
whom in New Testament times some
people tried to make a rival to
Paul, lived here. Here Mark, the au-
thor of the secnd book of the New Tes-
lament. expired under Nero's anath-
ema- From here the ship sailed
that left Paul and the crew struggling
in the breakers of Melita. Pompey's
pillar is here, about one hundred feet
high, its base surrounded by SO much
filth and squalor l was glad to escape
into an air that was breathable. This
tower was built in honor of Diocletian
for sparing the rebellious citizens. At
ter having declared that he would
make the blood run to his horses
knees, and his horse fell with him into
the blood and his knees Redeemed, Ethe
tyrant took it for granted that it was a
sign he should stop the massacre, and
hence this commemorative pillar to his
mercy. This is the city to which Omar
came after building one thousand and
four hundred mosques, and destroying
four thousand temples and thirty-five
thousand villages and castles, yet rid
ing in on a camel with a sack of corn,
n sack of figs and a wooden plate, all
that he had kept for himself, and the
diet 10 which he had limited
himself for most of the time
was bread and water. Was there ever
in any other man a commingling of ele-
ments so strange, so weird, so gener-
Gus, so cruel, so mighty, so weak, so
religious, SO fanatical2 In this city
was the greatest female lecturer the
world ever saw-Hypatia- But the les
son of virtue that she taught was OBJ
noxious, and so they dragged her
through the streets and scraped her
flesh from her bones with sharp oyster
shells, and then burned the fragments
of the massacred body. And here
dwelt Cleopatra, pronounced to be the
beauty of all time-although, if her
pictures are correct, have seen thou
sand women in Brooklyn more at
tractive-and she was as bad as she was
said TO be handsome. Queen, con-
queress, and spoke seven languages,
although it would have been better for
the world if she had not been able to
speak any. Julius Cesar conquered
the world, yet she conquered Julius
Cesar.
But all aboard the Egyptian rail-train
going up the banks of the Nilel Look
out of the window and see those camels
kneeling for the imposition of their
load And / think we might take from
them lesson, and instead OF trying TO
stand upright in our own strength, be-
come conscious of our weakness and
need of Divine help before we take upon
ms the heavy duties of the year or the
week or the day, and so kneel for the
burden We meet professions of men
and beasts on the way from their days
work, but, alas, for the homes to which
the poor Inhabitants are going. For
the most part novels of mud, But there
is something in the scene that thor
oughly enlists us 1t is the novelty of
wretchedness, and scene of pictur-
esque rags For thousands of years