The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1892-06-03
A VALUABLE LESSON.
EXTRACTED FROM A TEXT APPAR-
ENTITY BARREN OF SUGGESTIONS.

In Novel Lines OF Pulpit Oratory.
BROOKLYN, May 29.-Dr. Talmage
gave fresh illustration this morning of
the power he possesses of extracting
valuable lessons from a 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 a 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 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 to their
bits, and the chariot wheels got inter
locked and torn off, and the characters
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 ensepulcher
their Egyptian pursuers in one great
sarcophagus, and the splash and the
roar of the Red sea as it dropped to it's
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"
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 Lis men were making
burnt Offering of lamb, and the Phil
istines were about to attack them, it was
by terrorizing thunder they were dis
comfted. Job, who was a combination
of the Dantesque and the Miltonic, was
solemnized on this reverberation of the
heavens, and cried, "The thunder of his
power, who can understands 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 were full of
the thunder of war, and the thunder of
Christly 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 bonfbarding the earth with loud
sound must have been more of mys-
terry than it is to us. The ightnings,
which were to them wild monsters
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
lstry 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 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 discoursed to the utmost about
atmospheric electricity and magnetic
electricity and galvanic electricity and
therlnotic electricity and FRACTIONAL cleo
tricity and positive electricity and mega
live 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 natural law
there is always a spiritual law. As
there is 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