The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-01-22
LIFE'S CLOCKS.
Dr.. Talmage Discourses on the His
tory Of Time Measuring.
The Lords Wonderful Power-Bright and
Dark Days-Blessings From Adver-
Notwithstanding Toward
Happiness.


ward by which it had gone down in thu
dial of Ahaz." DIR. Talmage said:
Here is the first clock, or watch, OF
chronometer, or time-piece of which the
world has any knowledge. But it was
a watch that did not tick and a clock
that did not strike. 1t was sun dial
Ahaz, the king, invented it. Between
the hours given to statecraft and the
cares of office he invented something by
which he could tell the time of day.
| This sun dial may have been great
column, and when the shadow of that
column reached one point it was nine
o'clock a. M, and when it reached an.
other point it was three o'clock p. M,
and all the hours and half hours were
so measured. Or it may have been q
flight of stairs such as may now be
found in Hindustan and other old
countries, and when the shadow
reached one step it was ten o'clock a.
IN, or another step it was four o'clock
T. m, and likewise other hours may
have been indicated.
The clepsydra or water clock fol
lowed the sun dial and the sand glass
followed the clepsydra. Then came
the candle clock of Alfred the Great,
and the candle was divided into three
parts, and while the first part was
burning he gave himself to religion,
and while the second part was burning
he gave himself to politics, and while
the third part was burning he gave
himself to rest After awhile came
the wheel and weight clock, and Pope
Sylvester the Second was its most i'm
portant inventor.
And the skill of centuries of exquisite
mechanism toiled at the time-pieces
until the world had the ViclS's clock of
the fourteenth century, and Huyghens,
the inventor, swung the first pendulum,
and DIR. Hooke contrived the recoil es-
capement And the endless chain"
| followed, and the ratchet and pinion
lever" took its place, and the compen-
sation balance and the stem winder
| followed, and now we have the buzz
and clang of the great clock and watch
factories of Switzerland and Germany
and England and America turning out
what seems to be the perfection of
time-pieces. 1t took the world 5000
gears to make the present chrome
meter
So with the measurement of longer
spaces than minutes and hours. Time
was calculated from new moon to new
moon; then from harvest to harvest
Then the year was pronounced to be
three hundred and fifty-four days and
then three hundred and sixty days and,
not until long while after, three
hundred and siXty-five days Then
events were calculated from the found
alton of Rome, afterward from the
Olympic games. Then the Babylonians
had their measurement of the years,
and the Romans theirs. and the Armen-
ians theirs. Chronology was busy for
centuries studying monuments, inscrip-
tions, coins, mummies and astronomy,
trying to lay plan by which all ques-
ton of dates might be settled and
events put in their right place in the
procession of the ages. But the chron-
ologists only heaped up n mountain of
confusion md bewilderment until in
the sixth century Dionysius Exiguus,
Roman abbott, said: Let everything
date from the birth at Bethlehem of
the L rd Jesus Christ, the Saviour of
the world" The abbott proposed to
have things dated backward aud for
ward from that great event
What a splendid thought for the
world! What mighty thing for Chris
tianityl 1t would have been most
natural to date everything from the
creation of the world. But am glad
the chronologists could not too easily
guess how old the world was in order
to get the nations in the habit of dating
from that occurrence in its documents
and histories. Forever fixed is it that
all history is to be dated with reference
to the birth of Christ and. this matter
settled, Hales, the chief chronologist,
declared that the world was made 5,411
years before Christ and the deluge
came g, 155 years before Christ and all
the illustrious events OF the last nine
teen centuries, and all the great events
of all time to come, have been or shall
be dated from the birth of Christ.
We are told that Hezekiah, the king,
was dying of boil a fig was put
upon it as a poultice Hezekiah did
not want to die then. His son, who
was to take the kingdom, had not yet
been born, and Hezekiah's death would
have been the death of the nation. So
he prays for recovery and is told he
will get well. But he wants some
miraculous sign to make him sure of
it He has the choice of having the
shadow On the sun dial of Ahaz ad-
vance or retreat He replied it would
not be so wonderful to have the sun go
down, for it always goes down sooner
or later. He asks that it go backward.
In other words, let the day instead of
going on toward sundown turn and go
toward sunrise
see the invalid king bolstered up
and wrapped in blankets looking out
of the window upon the sun dial in the
court yard. While he watches the |
shadow on the dial the shadow begins |
TO retreat Instead of going on toward |
six o'clock in the evening it goes back |
toward six o'clock in the morning. The |
fig poultice had been drawing for some |
time, and, sure enough, the boil broke |
and Hezekiah got we'll
Now expect you will come on with |
your higher criticism and try to explain |
this away and say it was an optical de-
lusion of Hezekiah, and the shadow |
only seemed to go back or cloud came |
over it and it was uncertain which way |
the shadow did go. and as Hezekiah eX-
pected it to go back he took the action |
of his own mind for the retrograde |
movement No; the shadow went back |
on all the dials of that land and other
lands. Turn to IL Chron., xxi 81, |
and find that away off in Babylon the |