The Forrest City times., 1891-05-29
TALMAGE ON CREATION.
THE GREAT DIVINE ON THE
 WORLDS FIRST WEEK.
Tho Mountains, the Rivers, and All tho Living Things Over Which Man Is Emperor and Woman Empress
 A Wonderful Sermon.

night gives us Il weeks work. If we have fiied that week with successes we are hap, py. But am going to tell you what God did ln one week. Co>omogony, geology,
 astronomy, ornitholosy, ichthyology, bot. any, anatomy gre such vast subjects that
 no human life IS long enough to explore or comprehend any ono of them. BuG I have thought might in an unusual WAY tell you
 little of what God d in one week and that
 the first week. And whether you make il week Of days or a week of ages, | care not, Tor shall reach the same practical result or reverence and worship.
 'he hrst Monday morning found swing Ing m space the piled-up lumber of rocks
 and metal and soLl and water from whic b
 the earth Was to be builded. God made up his mind to create human family and they must have house to live in. But wherey Not roof not wall. not a door, not q room was lit for human occupancy. There IS not pile of black basalt in Yellowstone Park or an extinct volcano in Honolulu 90 inappropriate for human residence as was thls globe at that early period. Moreover, there WAS no human architect to draw . plan, no quarryman to blast the foundation stones, no carpenter to hew out beam, and
 no mason to trowel wall. Poor prospect God never did take any one in his counsels, but if he had asked some angel about the attempt to turn this planet into q place for human residence, the angel would have sad, "No, no; try sometother world; the crevices of this earth are too deep; it's crags are too appalling; it's darkness is too thick" But Monday morning came. think 1t was spring morning and about half past four o'clock. The first thing needed was light.-Light. And instantly the darkness began To simmer, aud the thick folds of blackncss to lift, and there were scintilatious, and coruscations and flashes and a billowins up Of resplendence, and in greats sheet 1t spread bout. North. ,-1 and radiance filled the atmosphere until 1t could hold no more of the brllliance. Light now to work by while supernatural intellgences look on. Light, the first chapter of the first day of the week.
 Now it is Tuesday morning. A delicate and tremendous undertahi ing is set apart for this day. There was great super
 abundance of water. God by the wave of hls hand this morning gathers part of 1t in suspended reseryors and part of it he orders down into the rivers, and lakes and seas.
 How to hang whole Atlantic Oceans in the clouds without their spilling over except Tn right quantities and at right times was an undertaking that no one but Omnipo. tence would have dared. But God does it as easily as you would lift glass of water. There he heists two clouds each thirty miles wide and five miles high and balances them. Here he lifts the cirrus clouds and spreads them out in great white banks as
 though 1t had been snowing in heaven. And the crro-stratus clouds In long parallel lines so straight you know an minute Geometer has drawn them. Clouds
 which are the armory from which thuuder-
 storms get their bayenets of fire. Clouds
 which are oceans on the wing. No wonder, long after this first Tuesday of Creation
 week. Elihu confounded Job with the ques-
 ton, 'Dost thou know the balancings of the
 clouds?" Half of this Tuesday work done,
 the other half is the work of compelling
 the waters to lie down in their destined
 places. So God picks up the solid ground
 and packs 1t up into five elevations which
 are the continents. With his finger he
 makes deep depressions in them, and these
 are the lakes while at the pi!ng up of the
 Alleghanies and Sierra Nevadas and Pyren-
 ees and Alps and Himalayas the rest of the
 waters start by the law Of gravitation to the lower places, and in their run down-hilI
 become the rivers, and then all around tho earth these rivers come into convention and become oceans beneath, as the clouds are
 oceans above.
 Now 1t is Wednesday morning of the
 worlds il st week How queer the hills
 look, and so unattractive they seem hardly
 worth having been made. But now all the surfaces are changing color. Something beautiful is creeping all over them. | has the color of emerald. Aye. 1t Is herbage.
 Hail to the green grass, Gods favorite color aud Gods favoritc plant as l judge from the fact he makes n larger number of them than Of anything else. But look wonder! Something starts out of the ground and goes higher up, higher and higher, and spreads out broad leaves. It is n palm tree. ionder is another growth, and it's leaves hang far down, and 1t is a willow tree. And wonder is a growth with mighty sweep of branches. And here they come-the pear and the ap- pie. aud the peach and the pomegranatc, and groves and orchards and forests. their shadows and their fruit girdling the earth.
 NNti n, ,rr ttftt-A AnI ketlft H. ture to great excellence in the nineteenth century, but we have nothing now to equal what | see on this first Wednesday of the worlds existence.
 Now it is Thursday morning of the worlds first week. Nothing will be ere ated to-day. The hours win be passed in scattering fogs and mists and vapors. The atmosphere must be swept clean. Other worlds are to hove in sight. This little ship of the earth has seemed to have all the ocean of mmensity to itself Bat mghtier craft are to be hailed to-day on the high seas of space. First, the moons white well % un.,i the sun bursts upon the scene. The light that on the previous three mornings was struck from m especial word now gathers in the suu, moon and stars. One for the day the otherr for the night. IL seemed as If they had all within twenty -four hours been created. An, this Is great time in the worlds first week. The moon, the nearest neighbor to our earth appears; her photograph 10 be taken Tn the nineteenth century. when the tele- scope shall bring her within one hundred and twenty miles of New York. And the sun now appears, afterwArd to be found eight hun dred and eighty thousand miles in dtam- eter, and put in astronomical scales, to be found to weigh nearly four hundred thousand times heavier than our earth Il mighty furnace, it's heat kept up by meteors pouring into 1t as fuel, wor d de- vouring other worlds with its jaws of
 flame. And the stars come out. those street lamps of heaven, those keys of pearl, upon which Gods fingers play the music of Inc spheres. How bright they look in this Oriental evening" Cancellations Galax- iesi What n twenty-four hours of this first week-solar, lunar, stellar appearances.
 All this Thursday and the adjoining nights employed in pulling aside the curtain of
 worlds. Enough! And the evening and
 the morning were the fourth day"
 Now it is Friday morning. Water, but
 not a fin swimming in it; air, but not
 wing flying it. It is silent world. Can Il
 he that it was made only for vegetabless
 But hark! There is a swirl and asplash-
 ing in all the four rivers of Pison, Gihon.
 Hiddekel. and Euphrates. They are all
 a-swim with life, some darting like arrows
 through split crystal, and others quiet in
 dark pools like shadows. Everything,
 from spotted trout to behemoth; all col-
 orcd, all shaped, the ancestors of finny
 tribes that shall by their wonders of con
 struction confound the Agassizs. the
 Cuviers and the Linneuses and tho ichthy-
 ologists of the more than six thousand
 years following this Friday of the first
 week. And while l stand on the banks of
 these Paradisaical rivers watching these
 finny tribes. i hear whirr In the air and I
 III hahnl1 of iur