Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1892-05-30
THE THUNDER
AND TEE SECRET PLACE THEREOF, FURNISH
THE SBJECT FOR A
SPLENDID Discourse BY Rev. Dr. Talmags-Blsssed
Is He Who Shall Find That Secret Place-E
Nay Be in a Cloud Of Adversely and Pain.
An Old Woman Who Fond Il

snA OF l4e pVMG4 Ae BUSINESSES - -
ing valuable lessons from text which
preachers have generally neglected as
barren ground. His sermon was based
On the text Psalms S1:7; II answered
thee in the secret place OF thunder"
It was past midnight, and o'clock
m the morning, far enough from sun
Use 10 make the darkness very thick,
md the Egyptian army In pursuit OF
tbe escaping IsraeiiteS are on the bot
tom of the Red Sea, its waters having
been set uD on either side In masonry OF
sapphire, for God can make wall as
,oiid out Of water as out Of granite, and
,he trOwels with which these two walls
were built were none the less powerful
because invisible. Such walls had never
before been lifted. When i saw the
waters OF the Red Sea rolling through
the Snez Canal, they were blue and
beautiful and flowing like other waters,
but tonight, as the Egyptians look up
10 them Quilt into walls, now on one
side and now on the other, they must
have been frOwning waters, Tor IL was
probable that the same power that INT
ed them up might suddenly ding them
prostrate. 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, aud II
qrowled and rumbled and Jared with
thunder; not thunder Ike that which
cheers the earth after drought, prom
Using the refreshing shower, but charged
and surcharged with threats Of doom.
THE EGYPTIAN CAPTAINS
lost their presence Of mind, and the
horses reared and snOrted and would
not answer TO their bits, and the chariot
wheels got interlOcked and torn of, and
the Red Sea fell on all the host. The
confusing and cOnfounding thunder was
10 answer to the prayer Of the lSraeliteS.
With their backs cut by the lash and
their feet bleeding and their bodies de-
crepit with the suffering or whole gen
creations, they had asked Almighty God
TO ensepulchre their Egyptian pursuers
in one grent sarcOphagus, and the splash
and the roar Of the Red Sea as 1t
dropped 10 its natural bed were only the
shutting Of the sarcOphagus on a dead
host. That is the meaning Of the text
when God saws: II answered thee In the
secret place Of thunder"
Now, thunder, all up and down the
Bible, is the symbol of power. Small
wits depreciate the thunder and say,
cit is the lightning that strikes" But
God evidently thinks the thunder OF
some importance or he would not make
so much OF it. That man must be with
out imagination, and without sensitive
ness, and without religion who can
without emotion see the convention OF
summer clouds called 10 order by the
falling gavel of the thunderbOlt. There
Is nothing In the natural world that so
aWes and sOlemnizes me as the thunder.
THE EGYPTIAN PLAGUE
Of hail was accompanied with this full
diapasOn Of the heavens. While Samuel
and his men were making burnc offer
ing Of lamb, and the PhiliStines were
about to attack them, 10 was by terror
izing thunder they were discounted.
JOB, who was a combination Of the
Dantesque and the Miltonic, was sol
emniZed by this reverberatiOn OF the
heavens, and cried: The thunder Of
His power, who can understand?' and
he challenges the universe by saying:
"Can'st thou thunder with a voice like
Him?n and he throws Rosa BOnheur'S
''Horse Fair into the shade by the
Bible photograph Of a war horse, when
he describes his neck as "clOthed with
thunder" Because of the power Of
James and John, they were called 1.-The
sons of thunder" The law given on
the basaltic cragS Of Mount Sinai was
emphasized with this cloudy ebuliition.
The skies all around about 81. John at
Patmos were full Of the thunder of war
and the thunder of Christly triumph
aud the thunder of resurrection and
the thunder Of eternity.
But, when my text says, II answered
thee in the secret place of thunder"
10 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 myst-
cry than 10 is on US. The lightningS,
which were TO them wild monsters rang
ing through the skies, in our time have
been dOmesticated.
WE HARNESS ELECTRICITY
TO vehicles, and we cage il in lamps,
and every school boy knows something
about the fact that it Is the passage of
electricity from cloud 20 cloud that
makes the heavenly racket which we
cal thunder. But, after all that chem
istry has taught the world, there are
mysteries about the skyey resonance,
AID 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 batter
les have been doing their work for a
thousand years 20 come and learned
have diSCOurSed 20 the utmost
U atmospheric electricity and mag
500 electricity and galyanic 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.
A poor old Christian woman standing
in the yest,oule of the church one Sun
day morning, trying 20 get her breath
again before She went up stairs 10 the
gallery, heard the enquiry and told the
secret For years she had been in the
habit Of concentrating all her prayers
'or particular persons In the church.
would see some man or woman
{, and, though she might not
~ the persons name, she would
prSA for that person until he or she
was c. verified 10 God. All her prayers
we're for that one person-just that one.
She waited and waited for communion
days 70 see when the candidates stood
up whether her prayers had been
etfectual 1t turned out that these
marvellous instances Of conversion were