The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1892-06-03
A VALUABLE LESSON.
EXTRACTED FROM A TEXT APPAR-
EMILY BARREN OF SUGGESTIONS.

DIR. Taimage Gives u Fresh Display of
His Ability to he Eloquent and Earnest
In Novel Lines of Pulpit oratory,
BROOKLYN, May s9.-Dr. Talmage
gave fresh illustration this morning of
the power he possesses of extracting
valuable lessons from text which
preachers have generally neglected as
barren ground, His sermon was based
on the text Psalms lxxxi, 7, II answered
thee in the secret place of thunder"
1t is past midnight, and two o'clock in
the morning, far enough from sunset
and sunrise to make the darkness very
thick, and the Egyptian army in pursuit
of the escaping Israelites are ON the bot
tom of the Red sea, Its waters having
been set up on either side in masonry of
sapphire, for God can make wall rs
solid out Of water as out of granite, and
the trowels with which these two walls
We're built We're none the less powerful
because invisible. Such walls had never
before been lifted.
When | saw the waters of the Red sea
rolling through the Sue7 canal they were
blue and beautiful and flowing like
other waters, but tonight, as the Egyp-
tians 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, Civ
ing them light, and the back of the Ian
tern was toward the Egyptians, and it
growled and rumbled and Jared with
thunder; not thunder like that which
cheers the earth after drought, promis-
ing 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 10 their
bits, and the chariot wheels got inter
locked and torn off, and the characters
We're 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 ensepulcher
their Egyptian pursuers in one great
sarcophagus, and the splash and the
roar of the Red sea as 1t dropped to its
natural bed were only the shutting of
the sarcophagus on a dead host. That
is the meaning of the text when God
says, 81 answered thee in the secret place
of thunder
A POWER AND MYSTERY.
Now thunder, all up and down the
Bible is the symbol of power. The Egyp-
tan plague of hail was accompanied
with this full diapason of the heavens.
While Samuel and his men were making
burnt offering of lamb. and the Phil
tstines were about to attack Them it was
by terrorizing thunder they We're dis
cOmfted. Job, who was combination
of the Dantesque and the Miltonic, was
solemnized on this reverberation of the
heavens, and cried, 1.-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 photo
graph 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 We're full of
the thunder of war, and the thunder of
Ch1istly triumph, and the thunder of
resurrection, and the thunder of eternity
But when my text says, Il answered
thee in the secret place of thunder" it
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 mys-
terry than it is to us. The lightnings,
ranging through the skies, in our time
have been domesticated. We harness
electricity to vehicles and we cage it in
lamps, and every schoolboy knows some
thing about the fact that it is the passage
of electricity from cloud to cloud that
makes the heavenly racket which we
| call thunder. But, after all that chem
istry has taught the world, there are
mysteries about this skyey resonance,
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 a hundred things not
known. After all the scientific batteries
have been doing their work for a thou
sand years to come and learned men
/ have discourscd to the utmost about
atmospheric electricity and magnetic
electricity and galwnic electricity and
+ therlnotic electricity and fractional cleo
tricity and positive electricity and mega
tive electricity my text will be as sug-
gestive as it is today, when it speaks of
the secret place of thunder.
RESULT OF A woMAN's PRAYERS.
Now right along by a natural law
there is always spiritual law. As
there is a secret place of natural thun-
der, there is a secret place of moral
thunder. In other words, the religious
power that you see abroad in the church
in the world has a hiding place, and in
many cases it is never discovered at all.
will use a 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. 1t was character
lied by strange and unaccountable con
versions. There were no great revival.
but individual cases of spiritual are.
and transformation.
A young man sat in one of the frol.i
pews. He was graduate of Yale, bri!
liant as the north star and notoriously
dissolute. Everybody knew him AM
liked him for his goniality, but deplored
his moral errantry. To please his par
ents he was every Sabbath morning il
church. One day there was a ringing o
the doorbell Of the pastor of that church