Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1892-06-02
AT THE TABERNACLE.
DR.. TAt-MAGE lLLuMlNATES AN OBJ
SQUIRE TEXT.

Significance of tho Verse, 81 Answered
Thoo in the Secret Place of Thunder"
In the Bible Thunder Is the Typo of
Power and Mystery.
BROOKLYN May 29.--Dr. Talmage gave
u fresh illustration this morning of the
power he possesses of extracting valuable
lessons from text which preachers have
generally neglected as barren ground. His
sermon was based on the text Psalms lxxxi,
z, Il answered thee in the secret place of
thunder"
1t is past midnight, and two o'clock in the
morning far enough from sunset and sun
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 i'll masonry of sapphire, for God
can make wall as solid out of water as
out of granite, and the trowels with which
these two walls We're 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, as the Egyptians look
up to them built into walls, now on one
side and now 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 PROSTATE A
great lantern of cloud hung over this
rhasm 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-
tlans, and it growed and rumbled and
Jared with thunder; not thunder like that
which Cl Gers the earth after a drought
promising the refreshing shower, but
charged and surcharged with threats of
doom.
The Egyptian captains lost their pres
cnce of mind, and the horses reared and
hnorted and would not answer to their bits
md the chariot wheels got interocked and
torn of, a0d the characters were hurled
headlong. and the Red sea fell on all the
host The confusing and confounding
thunder WIS III answer to the prayer of the
lsraeliteS. With their backs cut by the
lash and their feet bleeding and their
bodies decrepit with the suffering of whole
generations, they had asked Almighty God
to ensepulcher their Egyptian pursuers in
one great sarcOphagus, and the splash and
the roar of the Red sea as it dropped to its
utluItl bNu were Only the SnutJInC OF the
earcophagUs on dead host That is the
meaning of the text when God saws, II an
sWercd thee in the secret place of thunder. ="
THE 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 We're making a burnt of
lcrlng OF Il lamb. and the Philstines were
about to attack them, it was by terrorizinC
thunder they were discom1ited job
who was combination of the Dantesque
Gnd the MiltOniC, was solemnzed on this
reverberation of the heavens. and cried:
The thunder OF his power, who can I'M
Gerstand*" and he challenges the uni
verse by saying, "Can'st thou thunder
with a voice like him?" and he throws
Rosa Bonheurs 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 on
the basaltic crags Of Mount Sinai was en-
phasled with this cloudy cbulltion 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 of
eternity.
But when my text says, Il answered
thee III the secret place of thunder" it sug-
Ge>ts there Is some mystery about the
thunder. To the anCientS the cause of this
bombardlnG the earth with loud sound
must have been more of a mystery than it
Is 10 us The lightnings, which were to
them wild monsters ranging through the
skies, i'll our time have been domestiCated.
We harness electricity to vehicles and we
cage 1t in lamps, and every schoolboy
knows something about the fact that it is
the passage of electricity from cloud to
cloud that makes the heavenly racket
which we call thunder. But after all that
chemistry has taught the world, there are
mysteries about this skyey resonance. and
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 thunder
there arc a hundred things not known.
After all the scientific batteries have been
doing their work for a thousand years to
come and learned men have discoursed to
the utmost about atmospheric electricity
and magnetic electricity and galvanic cleo
tncty and thermotic electricity and fric-
uonal electricity and positive electricity
md negative electricity, my text will be
AS suggestive as it is today, when it speaks
Of the secret place Of thunder
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL LAWS.
Now right along by natural law there
Is always spiritual law. As there is a
secret place Of natural thunder, there is a
Secret place Of moral thunder In other
words, the religious power that you see
abroad in the church and in the world has
hiding place, and i'll many cases it is
never discovered at all. ! will use "A simil-
ltude, can give only the dim outline of
particular case, for many of the remark
hble circumstances have forgotten. Many
years ago there was n large church. 1t was
characterized ny strange and unaccount-
able conversions. There were no great re-
vivals, but Individual cases of spiritual
Arrest and transformation.
a young man sat in one of the front pcws
He was graduate of Yale, brilliant as he
north star and VIGOROUSLY dissolute
Every body knew him and liked him for his
geniality but deplored his moral errantry
nj. l,iL l,,,