Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-16
THE BOOK OF NAHUM.
Story Of the Prophet Whose Words
Have Lived the Centuries.
HE CRIED OUT AGAINST NINEVEH.
The Destroyers Came and the Metropolis
of the Earth Was Lost.
RESULTS OF LAYARD'S EXCAVATIONS
WRITTEN FOR TIE DIsPATCHI

cover space OF 400 years. That Is as long
as from this day back to the time of Chris
topher Columbus. And the very latest of
| these books was written more than 1000
| years ago. Now, when you get IL books
| which are almost the only survivals out of
the literature of four centuries, almost all
other books written beside them having
been quite forgotten, and when you reflect
that these Il books have lasted more than 20
centuries, during which men have persist
emily continued to remember and read them,
the inference is fair and natural one that
these books are worth something. The little
books, the foolish books, are forgotten in a
year. 1t is the great books that live.
These IL books are books of sermons.
And the sermons are political sermons.
These great preachers had conception Of
their duty and their place IN the world
which not only did not forbid them to
meddle in politics, but actually commanded
them to preach more about politics than
about any other subject whatsoever.
PREACHED ON LIVE TOPICS.
They discussed the great questions which
| were stirring the minds of their generation
1t is profitable and interesting to note what
| these preachers were not interested in-not
in metaphysics, not in rituals, not in mat
| ters UNCONVENTIONAL or ecclesiastical, not in
| anything small, temporary, impractical.
| They were concerned with great, wide, pub
lie questions. They felt called upon to
assail corruption in high places. Dishon-
est dealers, avaricious capitalists, selfish
priests, stealing politicians-for then they
had message, plain, strong, stern mes
sage.
Not much is known of Nahum He is
called the Elkoshite, which means that he
lived, or at least was born in q town named
! Elkosh, perhaps in Galilee. A little, OBJ
| scure town, anyhow, wherever it was. Out
| of backwoods Moresheth comes Micah, out
of backwoods Elkosh comes Nahum. Yes;
out Of backwoods Nazareth, small and de-
spised, q town with bad name, comes the
Prophet of prophets 1t matters little
where man is born. The future of the
man depends upon the man. No small sur
roundings can keep him from growing great
If the spirit of greatness is in him.
WHY HE PREACHED OF NINEvEH.
Some think, from q word or two in Ma
huns book, that he wrote in Judah. Either
way, Judah or Galilee, Nahum lived at an
immense enough distance from the city
against which he uttered all his preaching
that. What could have stirred up anybody
in Galilee or Judah to preach fierce ser
mon against that tar-away Nineveh?
Well, partly. perhaps, the interest which
every good man feels in the abolition of any
evil anywhere The spirit which took
Amos from his Tekoah pastures into the
streets of Samaria, the interest which we
ourselves feel in the two supreme barbarisms
of our generation-Siberian exile and
African slayery-this might account for it.
Siberia is long way off, and Africa is still
more distant, yet we are indignant and
have strong words to say about what goes
ON yonder beyond the oceans Nahum may
have been interested in darkest Nineveh as
we are in darkest England. But there was
much more than that. The wide space be-
tween the Mediterranean and the Caspian
Seas is traversed by three notable rivers;
one, the river of the promised land, the
other two, the rivers of the Garden of
Eden.
NNEvEH WAS THE GREAT CITY.
Between the Jordan and the Mediter-
ranean Sea lay the kingdoms of Palestine
Israel in the North, having Samaria for its
capital, and Judah in the South, having its
capital at jerusalem. Between the Euphrates
and the Tigris lay the kingdoms of Meso-
potamia-Assyria in the North, having
~
South, having its capital at Babylon. Now,
in Nahum's day the one city which stood
out pre-eminent among these four was
Nineveh. Babylon was in subsection,
Samaria was depopulated, and in captivity,
Jerusalem was paying tribute, all to
Nineveh.
The people of Jerusalem, then, had q good
deal to do with Nineveh, and good reason
for being interested in that great city. There
lived their great ruler. They had a king,
d-Namasreh-but the King of Nine
veh had carried him off and shut him
up in q palace prison which he had at
Babylon. Their real king was the King of
the Assyrians, who reigned at Nineveh. In
Nahum's day NineVeh was the center of the
world
A WISE MAN AND A SHOVEL.
We know a great deal about Nineveh,
and are likely to know great deal more.
We know it by the labors of men with
shovela The great city came to an end and
was destroyed. 1t seems incredibIe-that
vast city, like New York, like Paris, like
London, was leveled with the ground, and
and then absolutely forgotten. Men walked
over the place where it had stood and were
quite ignorant that any city had ever been
planted on that site. Across the river grew
up q new city named Mouslim, whence we
get the name muslin, and the people who
Lived there were altogether unaware OF
Nineveh. But some 20 years ago there
came that very wise man with a shovel, and
he began to dig down into the big mounds
across the river, and speedily discovered
wonders.
One thing that he found was a picture Of
the very King who reigned in Nineveh In
the days when Nahum was writing his book,
King Assur- bsni-pal. You may see it to-
day In the British Museum. The King and
Queen were serenely eating supper, looking
complacently meanwhile at the decapitated
and bleeding head of the King of Babylon,
who has committed suicide.
RECORDS THAT TOLD A STORY.
The man with the shovel dug down into
the Carnegie Library of Nineveh, and
brought out actual tons of books-queer
books written in character, and not on
paper, nor on parchment, nor on anything
else of which books are commonly made,
but on bricks-brick books, the characters
stamped in when the clay was soft. And,
most remarkable OF all, men studied these |
brick books and learned how to read the |
letters of this deadest of dead languages. |
The library was a vast one. This very |
King Assur- bani-pal had collected it. His
scribes were writing it in their books Of |
brick, copying all the good writing they |
knew of in the worlds literature of that |
day, lust at the time when Nahum was |
composing this book which we are studying. |
Awonderful ibrary-books Of astronomy |
astrology, mathematics, grammars with de-
clensions Of nouns and conjugation of verbs, |
dictionaries, law books, natural science, |
botany, geology, books of religion with our |
Genesis story in them, almost word for |