Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-01-21
THE FLIGHT OF TIME.
pA- TALMAeE breaches ON THE
sUNDlAL OF AAAz.

me bhaooWs Are Controlled by the
Hand Of Omnipotence-Time Flight
Marked by the sunrises-Daybreak on
the Mountain Tops.
BRoOKLYN, Jan. I0-Dr Talmage's ser
mon this morning was full Of brightness
and good cheer He might have called il
a recipe for happiness The buoyancy and
elasticity of temperament which charac.
terize him were conspicuous throughout,
and must have been impaired to his hear.
ems His text WAS II King Xxx, II. And
Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord.
and he brought the shadow ten degrees
backward by which it had gone down in
the dial Of Ahaz."
Here is the first clock or watch or chro-
nometer or timepiece OF which the world
has any knowledge. But il was watch
that did not tick and clock that did not
strike. 1t was sundial. Ahaz, the king.
Invented it. Between the hours given to
statecraft and the cares Of office he invent
ed something by which he could tell the
time Of day. This sundial may have been
a great column, and when the shadow of
that column reached one point it was nine
O'Clock u. m. and when it reached another
point it was three o'clock p. M. and all the
hours and half hours were so measured.
Or it may have been flight Of stairs such
as may now be found in Hindostan and
other old countries. and when the shadow
reached one step it was ten o'clock a. m., or
another step it was four O'Clock p m. and
likewise other hours may have been indi
Gated.
THE WORLDS HoRoLoGEs.
The clepsydra or water clock followed
the sundial, and the sand glass followed
the clepsydra. Then came the candle clock
Of Alfred the Great and the candle was
marked into three parts, and while the first
part was burning he gave himself to re
lgion, and while the second part was burn
ing he gave himself to politics, and while
the third part was burning he gave him
self to rest. After awhile came the wheel
and weight clock, and Pope Sylvester the
Second was its most important inventor.
And the skill of centuries of exquisite mech
anism toiled at the timepieces until the
world had the Vick's clock of the Four
teenth century and Huyghens, the inven-
tor, swung the first pendulum and DIR.
Hooke contrived the recoil escapement.
And the endless chain" followed and the
ratchet and pinion lever took its place,
and the compensation balance and the
stemwinder followed, and now we have
the buzz and clang of the great clock and
watch factories of Switzerland and Ger
many and England and America turning
out what seems to be the perfection of
timepeces. II took the world six thou
sand years to make the present chronom
eter So with the measurement of longer
spaces than minutes and hours Time was
calculated from new moon to new moon:
then from harvest to harvest. Then the
year was pronounced to be three hundred
and fifty four days and then three hundred
and sixty days, and not until Il long while
after three hundred and sixty-fve days.
Then events were calculated from the
foundation of Rome, afterward from the
Olympic games. Then the Babylonians
had their measurement of the year and the
Romans theirs and the Armenians theirs
and the Hindoos theirs. Chronology was
busy for centuries studying monuments.
Inscriptions coins, mummies and astron-
omy, trying to lay plan by which all
question of dates might be settled and
events put in their right place in the pro
cession of the ages. But the chronologists
only heaped up mountain of confusion
and bewilderment until in the Sixth cen
tury Dionysius Exiguus, Roman abbot,
said, let everything date from the birth
at Bethlehem of the Lord Jesus Christ, th
Saviour of the world" The abbot pro-
posed to have things dated backward and
forward from that great event. What
splendid thought for the world What a
mighty thing for Christianity! 1t would
have been most natural to date everything
from the creation of the world But am
glad the chronologists could not too easily
guess how old the world WAS in order to
get the nations in the habit of dating from
that occurrence in its DOCUMENTS and his
tories, Forever fixed in it that all history
Is to he dated with reference to the birth of
Christ and, this matter settled, Hales, the
chief chronologist declared that the world
was made five thousand four hundred and
eleven years before Christ. and the deluge
came three Thousand one hundred and
fifty five years before Christ. and all the
illustrious events of the last nineteen cen.
turies and all the great events of all time
to come have been or shall be dated from
the birth of Christ. These things | say
that you may know what watch is, what
clock is, what an almanac is, and learn
to appreciate through what tolls and hard
ships and perplexities the world came to
its present conveniences and comforts, and
to help, you to more respectful consider
alton Of that sundial of Ahaz planted In |
my text.
THE AFFLICTIoNs OF HEzEKlAH
We are told that Hezekiah the king was
dying of Il boil 1t must have Been one of
the worst kind of carbuncles, a boil with
out any central core and sometimes death.
full A fig was put upon it as poultice.
Hezekiah did not want to die then His
son, who was to take the kingdom, had not "
yet been born, and Hezekiah y death would |
have been the death of the nation So he
prays for recovery and is told he will get
well But he wants some miraculous sign
to make him sure of it. He has the choice
Of having the shadow on the sundial of
Ahaz advance or retreat He replied it
would not be SO wonderful to have the sun
go down, for it always does go down sooner
or later. He asks that it go backward. In
other words, let the day instead of going
on toward sundown turn and 90 toward
sunrise | see the invalid king bolstered
up and wrapped in blankets looking out of
The window upon the sundial in the court
yard. While he watches the shadow on the
dial the shadow begins to retreat. Instead
of going on toward six o'clock in the even
ing 1t goes back toward six o'clock in the
The big poultice had been draw
ing for some time, and sure enough the boil
broke and Hezekiah got we'll Now ex-
oect you will come on with your higher
criticism and try to explain this away and
Ny it was an optical delusion of Hezekiah,
md the shadow only seemed to go back or
! cloud came over and it was uncertain
which way the shadow did go and as Heze.
liah expected it to go back he took the &C
ion OF his own mind for the retrograde
movement No, the shadow went back on
III the dials of that land and other lands.
Turn to II Chronicles xxxii, 81, and find that
lway off in Babylon the mighty men of the
NrksS -.