Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-06-09
AT THE TABERNACLE.
Or TALMhcE ILLUMNArEs AN oe-
! scuRE TEXT.

Significance - TIE verss. 81 Answered
Thee In the Secret Place Of Th1nder."
In the Bible Thunder Il the Type sf
Power and Mystery.
BRooKLYH, May eo.-Dr. Talmage gave
q fresh illustration this morning Of the
power he Possesses Of extracting valuable
lessons from q text which preachers have
generally neglected as barren ground. His
sermon was based on the text Psalms lxxxi,
Z, 81 answered thee in the secret place Of
thunder"
1t 10 past midnight, and two o'clock In the
morning. far enough from sunset and sum
rise to make the darkness very thick, and
the Egyptian army In pursuit of the es-
Gaping Israelites are on the bottom 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, Is the Egyptians look
up to them built into walls, now on one
aide and DOW 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 prostrate. A
great lantern Of cloud hung over this
chasm between the two walls. The door
of that lantern was opened toward the Is
raelites ahead, giving them light, and the
back Of the lantern was toward the Egyp-
eians, and IL growled and rumbled and
Jared with thunder; not thunder like that
which cheers the earth after a drought,
promising 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 interlocked and
torn of, and the charioteers were hurled
headlon0. and the Red sea fell on all the
host The confusing and confoundine
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. thew had asked Almighty God
to ensepulcher their EUyptian pursRers in
one great sarcophaRus, 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 q dead host, That is the
meaning of the text when God saws. 81 an
swered thee in the secret place of thunder. y
THR SYMBOL OF POWER
Now, thunder, all up and down the Bible,
is the symbol of power. The Egyptian
plague of hail was accompanied with this
full diapason of the heavens. While Sam
uel and his men were making q burnt Of
fering Of q lamb, and the Philistines were
about to attack them, it was by terrorizing
thunder they were discounted. 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 un.
derstand" and he challenges the uni.
verse by saying, "Can'st thou thunder
with a voice like him2" 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
''the sons of thunder" The law given or
the basaltic crags of Mount Sinai was EN-
phasized 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 thun
der of resurrection and the thunder oi
eternity.
But when my text SAYS, 'T answered
thee in the secret place of thunder" it sug
gests 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 mystery than il
is to us. The lightnings, which were tc
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 something about the fact that it /.
the passage of electricity from cloud Il
cloud that makes the heavenly racket
which we call thunder. But after all that
chemistry has taught the world, there art
mysteries about this skyey resonance, anG
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 o
thunder
To one thing known about the tbunde,
there are a hundred things not known
After all the scientific batteries have beer
doing their work for thousand years tt
come and learned men have discoursed t.
the utmost about atmospheric electricity
and magnetic electricity and galvanic elec
tricity and theSmotic electricity and fric
tional electricity and positive electricit,
and negative electricity, my text will b.
as suggestive as it is today, when it speak.
of the secret place of thunder.
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL LAWS.
Now right along by natural law ther,
is always a spiritual law. As there is ;
secret place of natural thunder, there is {
secret place of moral thunder. In othel
words, the religious power that you Sc,
abroad in the church and in the world ha.
a hiding place, and in many cases it i.
never discovered at all. Twill use simil