Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1892-06-04
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
TAIMAGE ON THE sEcAEr
PLACE OF THUNDER.
A Beautiful Sermon from q Familiar
Bible Text-How Some Notable Con-
versions Were Effected by Fervent
Prayers. II

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suit of the escaping Israelites are on
the bottom of the Red sea, its waters
having been set up on either side in
masonry of sapphire, for God can make
wall as solid out of water as out
of granite, and the trowels with
which these two walls were
built were none the less
powerful because invisible. Such walls
had never before been lifted. When
saw the waters of the Red sea rolling
through the Suez canal, they were blue
and beautiful and flowing like other
waters, but tonight, as the Egyptians
look up to them built into walls, now
on one side and now on the other, they
must have been frowning waters, for
it was probable that the same power
that lifted them up might suddenly
fling them PROSTATE. A great lantern
of cloud hung over this chasm between
the two walls. The door of that
/ lantern was opened toward the Is
raelites ahead, giving them light,
and the back of the lantern was
toward the Egyptians, and it growled
and rumbled and Jared with thunder;
not thunder like that which cheers the
earth after a drought, promising the
refreshing shower, but charged and
surcharged with threats of doom. The
Egyptian captains lost their presence
of mind, and the horses reared end
snorted and would not answer to their
bits, and the chariot wheels got inter
locked and torn off, and the charioteers
were hurled headlong, and the Red
sea fell on all the host.
The confusing and confounding
thunder was in answer to the prayer of
the Israelites- With their backs cut by
the lash and their feet bleeding, and
their bodies decrepit with the suffering
of whole generations, they had asked
Almighty God to ensepulchre their
Egyptian pursuers in one great sarcoph-
agus, and the splash and the roar of
the Red sea as it dropped to its natural
bed were only the shutting of the
sarcophagus on dead host. That is
the meaning of the text when God
says; II answered thee in the secret
place of thunder"
To one thing known about the thun-
der, there are a hundred things not
known. After all the scientific bat
teries have been doing their work for
a thousand years to come and learned
men have discoursed to the utmost
about atmospheric electricity and mag.
netic electricity and galvanic electricity
and thermotic electricity and FRACTIONAL
electricity and positive electricity and
negative electricity, my text will be as
suggestive as it is to-day, when it
speaks of the secret place of thunder.
Now, right along by natural law,
there is always a spiritual law. AS
there is secret place of natural thun-
der, there is secret place of moral
thunder. In other words, the religious
power that you see abroad in the
church and in the world has hiding
place, and in many cases it is never
discovered at all. i will use simili-
tude. can give only the dim outline
of a particular case, for many of the re-
markable circumstances l have forgot
ten. Many years ago there was large
church. twas characterized by strange
and unaccountable conversions. There
were no great revivals, but indi-
vidual cases of spiritual arrest and
transformation. A young man sat in
one of the front pews. He was grad
uate of Yale, brilliant as the North
star and VIGOROUSLY dissolute Every
body knew him and liked him for his
genialitY but deplored his moral
errantry. To please his parents he
was every Sabbath morning in church.
One day there was ringing of the
door bell of the pastor of that church,
and that young man, whelmed with
repentance, iIhplored prayer and adj
viceI and passed into complete reforma-
tion of heart and life. All the neigh
borhood was astonished and asked:
Why was this? His father and
mother had said nothing to him about
his souls welfare. On another aisle of
the same church sat an old miser He
paid his pew rent but was hard on the
poor and had no interest in any philan-
thropy. Piles of money! And the
people said: What struggle he will
have when he quits this life, to part
with his bonds and mortgages. One
day he wrote to his minister: please
call Immediately. / have a matter of
great Importance about which / want
to see you" When the pastor came
in the man could not speak for emotion,
but after awhile he gathered self
control enough to say: 81 have
lived for this world too long. l want
to know il you think 1 can be saved,
and, II so, wish you would tell me
how" Upon his soul the light soon
dawned, and the old miser, not only
revolutionized in heart but in life, began
TO scatter benefactions, and toward all
the great charities of the day he be-
came a cheerful and bountiful almoner.
What was the cause of this change?
everybody asked; and no one was
capaJ.e of giving an intelligent
answer. In another part of the church
sat. Sabbath by Sabbath, a
beautiful and talented woman, who
was great society leader. She went
to church because that was respecta-
bic thing TO DO, and in the neighbor-
hood where she lived, IL was hardly
respectable not to go. Worldly was she