The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-11-18
FALL OF BABYLON.
Sermon by DR.. Talmage on Political
~ Corruption.
This Great Republic Warned Against the
Fate OF the Ancient City-Corruption
In American Politics-LIcen-
tiousnesS Rebuked-

In sermon preached at Brooklyn the
Sunday previous to the general election
Rev. T. 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 one hour
is thy Judgment come" He said:
Modern scientists are doing a splen-
did work in excavating the tomb OF a
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
surprise These scientists find yellow
bricks still impressed with the name of
Nebuchadnezzar, and they 90 down into
the sarcophagus of monarchy buried
more than two thousand years ago.
May the explorations of Rawlinson and
Layard and Chevalier and Opperto and
Lotus and Chesney be eclipsed By the
present archaeological uncovering.
But is it 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 ninety-three 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 garden on an arti-
fetal hill four hundred feet high, the
sides of the mountain terraced All
this built to keep the kings wife, Amy
It's, from becoming homesick for the
mountainous region in which she had
spent her girliood- The waters of the
Euphrates spouted up TO irrigate this
great altitude into fruits and flowers
and arborescence unima ginable. \ great
river running from north to south
clear through the city, bridges over it,
tunnels under it, boats on it.
A city OF bazaars 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
sects in Spain, and worries brought from
successful elephants in India, and dia-
monds whose fash was a repartee to
Al
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
filed the tankards for the tenth time,
and reeling 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
els 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
morning dawned the conquerors were
inside the outside trenches. Babylon
had fallen, and hence the sublime thren-
odv of the text: alas, alas that great
city Babylon, that mighty city, for in one
hour has that judgment come" But do
nations die? o, yes, there is great NOR
tally among monarchies and republics.
They are like individuals in the fact
that they are born, they have a middle
life, they have a decease, they have a
cradle and a 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.
Dead answer the ruins of Karnak
and Luxor, and from seventy pyramids
on the east side Of the Nile there comes
up a great chorus, crying: Dead.
dead!' Assyrian empire, stand up and
answer. Dead cry the charred ruins
of Nineveh. After Goo years Of maguifi-
cent opportunity, dead Israelitish
kingdom, stand up. After $50 years of
divine inter position and of miraculous
vicissitude AID of heroic behavior and
of appalling depravity, dead PhRnicia,
stand up and answer. After inventing
the alphabet and giving it to the world,
and sending 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,
all answer: Dead Phenicia-" Athens,
after Phidias, after Demosthenes,
after Miltiades, dead. Sparta, after
Leonidas, after Fury biades, after Sala-
mis-. after Thermopyle, dead Roman
empire, 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
the south, by the Atlantic ocean on the
west Home of three great civiliza-
lions, owning all the then discovered
world that was worth owning, Roman
empire, answer Gibbon in his Rise
and Fall of the Roman Empire" saws
Dead and the forsaken seats OF the
ruined Coliseum, and the skeleton of
the acqueducts, and the miasma of the
Carpagna, and the fragments of the
marble baths, and the useless piers of
the Bridge Triumphalis. and the Nam
ertine prison, holding no more apos-
tolic prisoners, and the silent Forum,
and Basilica of Constantine, and the
arch of Titus. and the Pantheon come
in with great chorus, crying: Dead,
deadr' After Horace, after Virgil.
after Tacitus, after Cicero, dead After
Horatius on the bridge, and Cincin-
natus, the farmer oligarch, after Pom
pey, after Scipio, after Cassius, after
Constantine, after Cesar, dead The
war eagle of Rome few so high it was