The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1892-06-01
AN UNSEEN POWER.
Rev. DR.. Talmage Discourses on
Thunder In the Bible.
He Refers to the Apostles James and
John, Who We're Called "Sons Of
Thunder"-The Secret Re-
ligious Power In
the Church

liz 1ulldBO UOOh lOr MS sermon laSU
Sunday, Psalms lxxxi, 7 81 answered
thee in the secret place of thunder"
1t is past midnight, and 2 o'clock in
the morning, far enough from sunset
and sunrise to make the darkness very
thick, and the Egyptian army in pur-
suit of the escaping Israelites are on
the bottom of the Red sea, its waters
having been set up on either side in ma
sonry 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 l 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
Israelites 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
drought, promising the refreshing
shower, but charged and surcharged
with threats Of doom.
The Egyptian captains lost their pres
ence of mind, and the horses reared and
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 70 ensepulcher
their Egyptian pursuers in one great
sarcophagus, 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; 81 answered thee in the secret
place Of thunder"
Now thunder, all up and down the
Bible, is the symbol Of power. The
Egyptian plague Of hail was accom-
panied with this full diapason Of the
heavens. While Samuel and his men
were making burnt offering OF a
lamb, and the Philistines were about TO
attack them,i was by terrorizing thun-
der they were discounted. Job, who
was combination of the Dantesque
and the Miltonic, was solemnized on
this reverberation of the heavens, and
cried, "The thunder of his power, who
can understand?" and he challenges the
universe by saying, ''Canst thou
thunder with voice like Him?" and he
throws Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair
into the shade by the Bible photograph
Of a warhorse, when he describes his
neck as clothed with thunder" Be
cause Of the power Of James and John
they were called "the sons of thunder" :"
The law given on the basaltic crags Of
Mount Sinai was emphasized with this
cloudy ebullition. The skies all around
about ST. John at Patmos were full Of
the thunder of war, and the thunder Of
Christly triumph, and the thunder of
resurrection, and the thunder Of eter-
nifty.
But when my text says, 81 answered
thee in the secret place of thunder, =" IL
suggests there is some mystery about
the thunder. To the ancients the cause
Of this bombarding the earth with loud
sound must have been more of a mys-
terry than II is TO us. The lightnings,
which were TO them wild monsters
ranging through the skies in our time
have been domesticated. We harness
electricity to vehicles, and we cage II in
lamps, and every schoolboy knows some
thing about the fact that it is the pas
sage Of electricity from cloud to cloud
that causes the heavenly racket which
we call thunder. But, after all that
chemistry has taught the world, there
are mysteries about this skyey reso-
nance, and my text, true in the time of
the Psalmist, is true now and always
will be true, that there is some secret
about the place Of thunder.
To one thing known about the thun-
der there are hundred things not
known. After all the scientific batter
les 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 friction
electricity and positive electricity and
negative electricity my text will be as
, suggestive us tis to-day, when itspeaks
of the secret place Of thunder.
Now right along by natural law
there is always a spiritual law. As
there Is a 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
in the world mas hiding place, and in
many cases II is never discovered at all.
will use similitude. / can give only
the dim outline Of particular case, for
many Of the remarkable circumstances
/ have forgotten. Many years ago
there was large church. II was char
acterized by strange and unaccountable
conversions. There were no great re-
vivals, but individual cases Of spiritual
arrest and transformation.
A young man sat in one OF the front
pews. He was a graduate Of Yale, bril-
liant as the north star and notoriously
dissolute. Everybody knew him and