Baxter Springs news. [volume] (Baxter Springs, Kan.) 1882-1919, 1892-11-12
FALL OF BABYLON.
Sermon by DR.. Talmage on Political
Corruption
This Great Hepublic Warned Against the
Fate of the Ancient City-Corruption
in American Politios--Liccn-
tiOusness kcbukcd.


Rev. I. Dewitt Talmage discoursed on
the tendency to corruption in politics,
taking his text from Revelations xviii
10: "Alas, alas, that great city Bah
ylon. that mighty city! for in ono hour
is thy Judgment come" He said;
Modern scientists are doing n splen-
did WORK in cxclvating the tomb of q
dead empire holding in its arms dead
city. mother and child of the same name
babylon. The ancient mound invites
'tl,e spades and shovels and crowbars
while tho unwashcd natives look on in
surprise. These scientists find yellow
bricks still impressed with the name OF
acknowledgements, and they go down into
tho sarcophagus of monarchy buried
more than two thousand years ago.
May the explorations of Rawlinson and
Iayard and Chcvalier and opperto and
LOTUS and Chesney be eclipsed by the
present archaeological uncovering.
But is it possible this is all that re-
anains of Babylon? city once five
times larger than London and twelve
Ur,es larger than New York? Walls
three hundred and seventy-three feet
high and ninety-threc feet thick.
Twenty-Five FURNISHED gates on each
side, with streets running clear through
TO corresponding gates on the other
side. Six hundred and twenty-five
squares More pomp and wealth and
splendor and sin than could be found
in any five modern cities combined. A
city of palaces and temples. A city
having within it n garden on an arti-
ticial hill four hundred feet high, the
sides of the mountain terraced. All
this built to keep the kings wife, Amy
Is. from becoming homesick for the
mountainous region in which she had
spent her girliood. The waters OF the
Duphrates spouted IL. to irrigate this
great altitude into fruits and flowers
and arboresccnce unimaginable A great
river running from north to south
dear through the city, bridges over it,
tunnels under it, boats on it.
A city of bazanrs and of market places,
unrivalled for aromatics and unguents
and high mettled horses with grooms
by their side, and thyme wood, and
African evergreen, and Egyptian linen.
and all styles of costly textile fabric,
and rarest puppies extracted from shell
fish on the Mediterranean coast, and
rarest scarlets taken from brilliant in
scots in Spain, and worries brought from
successful elephants in India, and dia-
nponds whose fash was repartee to
the sun. Fortress within fortress, en-
battlement rising above embattlement
Great capital of the ages But one night,
while honest citizens were asleep, but
all the saloons Of saturnalia were in full
blast, and at the kings castle they had
'Rlled the tankards for the tenth time.
and Keeling and guffawing and hic-
coughing around the state table were
the rulers of the land, Gen. Cyrus Or
.dered the besieging army to take SHOW
eds and spades, and they diverted the
river from its usual channel into an
other direction SO that the forsaken bed
Of the river became the path on which
the besieging army entered. When the
Iaorning dawned the conquerors were
aside the outside trenches. Babylon
had fallen, and hence the sublime thren-
aody of the text: "Alas, alas that great
lily Babylon, that mighty city, for in one
A,our has that Judgment come" But do
nations die? o, yes, there is great NOR
rality among monarchies and republics.
T'hey are like individuals in the fact
that they are born, they have a middle
life, they have a decease, they have a
.,radle and a grave. Some of them are
a.sassinated, some destroyed by their
avn hand. Let me call the roll OF some
.af the dead civilizations and. some OF
the dead cities and let some one answer
fer them.
Egvptian civilization, stand up.
.Dead!" answer the ruins of Karnak
and Luxor, and from seventy pyramids
IN the east side of the Nile there comes
ND a great chorus, crying: dead.
Aead!" Assyrian empire, stand up and
answer ''Deadr' cry the charred ruins
at Nineveh. After 600 years OF magnih-
cent opportunity, dead lsrnelitish
kingdom, stand up. After $50 years Of
divine interpOsition and of miraculous
vicissitude and of heroic behavior and
Of appalling dcpravity, dead. PheniciS'
stand up and answer. After inventine
the alphabet and giving it to the world
aad sending out her merchant caravan'
An one direction to central Asia, anc
sending out her navigators to the AT
lantic ocean in another direction, dead
Pillars of Hercules and rocks on which
the Tyrian fishermen dried their nets
all answer: Dead Phenicia" Athens
after Phidias, after Demosthenes
after Miltiades, dead. Sparta, ate
Leouidas. after Eurybiades, after Sala'
unis. after ThernopylR, dead. Roman
empire, stand up and answer: Empir
once bounded by the British channel OF
the north, by the Euphrates on the east
by the great Sahara desert in Africa OF
the south, by the Atlantic ocean on tn