Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1892-11-07
4 SERMON To VOTERS.
- - MAGE scouHcEs THE. PHARl-
WHO CORRUPT ELECTIONS.

WHO CORRUPT ELECTIONS.
rbe W. derfuI City of Babylon, It's Great
sss, u Debaucbery and Its Sudden nm.
Awful Ruin--Is This Nation Runninl
ee Same Course?
BROOKLYN, Nov. 6.-Rev. DR.. Tai
mage today selected for his sermon
subject sufficiently appropriate for tbes'
times, when throughout the United
States great political questions are being
discussed and the nation is about to gt
to the ballot box and decide who shall
Fule in neighborhood, town, city and ma
tion. The text chosen was Revelation
xviii, 10, "Alas, alas, that great city
Babylon, that mighty city, for in on.
hour is thy Judgment comer
Modern scientists are doing splendid
work in excavating the tomb of dead
empire holding in its arms dead city
mother and child of the same name
Babylon. The ancient mound invites
the spades and shovels and crowbars
while the unwashed natives look on in
Eurprise. These scientists find yellow
bricks still impressed with the name OF
Ncbuchadnezzar, and they go down into
the sarcophagus Of monarchy buried
more than two Thousand years ago. May
the explorations of Rawlinson and La
yard and Chevalier and Opperto and
LOTUS and Chesney be eclipsed by the
present archaeological uncoveringl
But is 1t possible this is all that re-
mains of Babylon-a city once five times
larger than London and twelve times
larger than New York? Walls three
hundred and seventy-three feet high and
hinety-three feet thick. Twenty-Five
FURNISHED gates ON each side, with
streets running clear through TO corre-
bponding gates on the other side. Six
hundred and twenty-five squares. More
pomp and wealth ana splendor and sin
than could be found in any five modern
cities combined A city Of palaces and
temples. A city having within it gar
den on an artificial hill four hundred
feet high, the sides of the mountain ter
raced. All this built to keep the kings
wife, Amytis, from becoming homesick
for the mountainous region in which she
had spent her girlhood. The waters of
the Euphrates spouted up to irrigate this
great altitude into fruits and flowers
and aborescence unimaginable--a great
river running from north to south clear
through the city, bridges over it, tun-
nels under it, boats on it.
THE DEBAUCHED CITY.
A city Of bazaars and market places,
unrivaled 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 fabrics, and rar-
est purples extracted from shellfsh on
the Mediterranean coast, and rarest scar
lets taken from brilliant insects in
Spain, and ivories brought from sue
cessful elephant hunts in India, and
diamonds whose flash 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 satur-
MALTA were in full blast, and at the
kings castle they had filled the tanlsards
for the tenth time, and reeling and guf-
fawing and hiccoughing around the
state table were the rulers of the land,
General Cyrus ordered his besieging
army to take shovels and spades, and
they diverted the river from its usual
channel into another direction 80 that
the forsaken bed of the river became
the path on which the besieging army
entered. When the morning dawned
the conquerors were inside the outside
trenches. Babylon had fallen, and
hence the sublime threnody of the text,
"Alas, alas, that great city Babylon,
that mighty city, for in one hour is thy
Judgment GOMEZ
But do nations die? Oh, yes: there is
great mortality among monarchies and
republics. They are like individuals in
the fact that they are born; they have a
middle life; they have decease; they
have cradle and grave. Some of
them are assassinated, some destroyed
by their own hand. Let me call the
roll Of some of the dead civilizations
and some OF the dead cities and let some
one answer for them.
Egyptian civilization, stand up
"Deads answer the ruins of Karnak
and Luxor, and from seventy pyramids
on the east side OF the Nile there comes
mp great chorus, crying, dead, deadp
Assyrian empire. stand up and answer.
"Deadr cry the charred ruins of MIN
evah. After six hundred years of mag
nihcent opportunity, dead. Israelitish
kingdom. stand up. After two hundred
and fifty years of divine interposition,
and of miraculous yicissitude, and Of he
roic behavior, and of appalling depravity,
dead. Phnnicia, stand up and answer.
After inventing the alphabet and
giving 1t to tho world. and send
Ing out her merchant caravans in
one direction to central Asia. and
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
ali answer. "Dead Phmnicia." Athens,
after Phidias, after Demosthenes, after
Eiltiades, dead. Sparta, after Leoni-
das. after Eurybiades, after Salamis,
after Thermopyle. dead. Roman en-
pire. stand up and answer--empire once
bounded by the British channel ON the
north. by the Euphrates ON the east. by
the great Sahara desert in Africa on tho
south, by the Atlantic ocean ON tho
west; home Of three great civiliza-
kions. owning all the then discovered
world that was worth owning Roman
Dmpiro, answer. Gibbon, IN his "Rise
md FAN Of the Roman Empire